911 Dispatcher's PTSD after Maimed baby Call Merits Workers' Comp Benefits

Davenport, IA (WorkersCompensation.com) – First responders experience scary events all the time. But there is a trend, including in Iowa, not to force responders to clear a higher hurdle to collect workers’ compensation benefits for PTSD and other mental injuries.

The 911 dispatcher in Tripp v. Scott Communications Ctr., No.  21-0841 (Iowa 07/08/22), didn’t have to show that a disturbing call she received at work was hyper-unusual to establish that it caused her PTSD, the Iowa Supreme Court held.

The 16-year veteran of a county dispatch department was used to scary calls. But this one was different. One day, a woman called and kept screaming “Help me, my baby is dead!” And the dispatcher heard an officer state in the background that rigor mortis had already set in and that it looked like the baby had been struck with a claw hammer.

Though receiving disturbing calls was a regular part of the job, this call caused the dispatcher debilitating anxiety, depression, suicidal feelings, and an extreme sensitivity to noises. A doctor eventually diagnosed her with PTSD, and she sought workers’ compensation benefits.

The dispatcher appealed after the Workers’ Compensation Board and a state district court denied her benefits. They denied benefits on the basis that the dispatcher failed to show that the call was the legal cause of her PTSD. Specifically, they pointed out that the call was not unusual or unexpected. Rather, it was a normal part of the job, they said.

The court explained that its standard for establishing whether a workplace event legally caused a mental impairment changed in 2002.

By changing the standard, the court stated, it participated in a nationwide trend to protect first responders’ rights. The old standard would have required that, to obtain benefits, first responders would have to show the event that caused the mental injury was substantially more severe than what might injure someone in another profession. “They would bear a burden to prove hyper-unexpected causes and hyper-unusual strains—some extraordinary species of traumatic event, above and beyond the perilous events that they regularly confront—to qualify for benefits,” the court wrote.

Further, the court noted, it was undisputed that the dispatcher’s PTSD arose out of and in the course of her employment. “The evidence was unrebutted (from the testifying doctors, [the dispatcher’s] husband, and [the dispatcher] herself) that her PTSD arose directly from her handling of the screaming 911 call and the reports about the infant's maiming that immediately followed it,” the court wrote.

Because the operator established that her PTSD resulted from a manifest happening of a sudden traumatic nature from an unexpected cause or unusual strain, the court held that she established legal causation.

The court reversed and remanded the case.

 Forms, email updates, legal, regulatory, and compliance information from Iowa and 52 other jurisdictions across the U.S. can be found on WorkCompResearch.com.

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