LEE BURRESS , Respondent - Appell ant , vs. IBP, INC. , Petitioner - Appell ee .
Annotate this Case
Download PDF
IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
No. 8-477 / 07-1887
Filed October 29, 2008
LEE BURRESS,
Respondent-Appellant,
vs.
IBP, INC.,
Petitioner-Appellee.
________________________________________________________________
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Polk County, Robert J. Blink,
Judge.
Lee Burress appeals from the district court order on judicial review finding
he suffered an occupational disease rather than a work-related injury.
REVERSED.
Jason D. Neifert of Max Schott & Associates, P.C., Des Moines, for
appellant.
Timothy A. Clausen and Sharese Manker of Klass Law Firm, L.L.P., Sioux
City, for appellee.
Heard by Huitink, P.J., and Vaitheswaran and Potterfield, JJ.
2
VAITHESWARAN, J.
Our legislature has set forth two workers’ compensation schemes: one for
occupational diseases and one for work-related injuries. Compare Iowa Code
ch. 85A (affording compensation for occupational diseases) with Iowa Code ch.
85 (affording compensation for work-related injuries).
exclusive.
The two are mutually
See Iowa Code § 85A.14 (disallowing compensation under
occupational disease chapter for work-related injuries compensable under
chapter 85); § 85.61(4)(b) (stating “occupational disease” is not an “injury”).
Lee Burress contracted brucellosis at work. The workers’ compensation
commissioner determined that he had an injury governed by Iowa Code chapter
85 (2005) and a two-year statute of limitations rather than an occupational
disease governed by Iowa Code chapter 85A and a one-year statute of repose.
On judicial review, the district court reversed. We are persuaded that the agency
determination was supported by substantial evidence.
I. Background Facts and Proceedings
Burress worked for meatpacker IBP, Inc. between 1987 and 1997. During
that time, he came into contact with hog blood. In 2003, he began walking with a
severe limp. He subsequently underwent hip surgeries in an effort to address the
problem. Following one of these surgeries, Burress acquired an infection, which
persisted for several months. In December 2003, Burress learned that he was
infected with “Brucella suis” or brucellosis. In December 2004, physician William
M. Nauseef advised him that he contracted the brucellosis from hog blood, with
the “portal of entry” being abrasions in his skin.
3
On January 3, 2005, Burress filed a workers’ compensation petition
alleging he suffered from “chronic infection, hips, bone” as a result of “[c]ontact
with blood products and tissue from slaughtered hogs.” IBP, Inc. responded that
the claimed injury was an occupational disease governed by Iowa Code chapter
85A.
Following a hearing, a deputy commissioner found that Burress sustained
an injury rather than an occupational disease. The deputy further found that
Burress did not become “aware of the probable compensable character of his
condition until sometime in early December of 2004” and his petition was filed
within two years of that period, as prescribed by chapter 85.
The deputy
commissioner awarded Burress permanent partial disability benefits.
IBP filed an application for rehearing, which the deputy commissioner
denied.
On intra-agency appeal, the commissioner adopted the deputy
commissioner’s decision with one exception; the commissioner concluded that
Burress’s injury totally disabled him, entitling him to the payment of permanent
total disability benefits.
IBP filed a petition for judicial review.
The district court reversed the
agency decision. The court found that Burress suffered an occupational disease
rather than an injury. The court concluded that Burress was obligated to file his
petition within a year after the disease manifested itself. Because his petition
was not filed within that time frame, the district court dismissed it.
appealed.
Burress
4
II. Analysis
On appeal, Burress does not take issue with the district court’s conclusion
that his petition was untimely under the occupational disease statute. He simply
argues that the brucellosis he acquired was not an occupational disease
triggering that deadline.
Chapter 85A, governing occupational diseases, defines “occupational
disease” as a disease that has “a direct causal connection with the employment”
and “followed as a natural incident thereto from injurious exposure occasioned by
the nature of the employment.” Iowa Code § 85A.8. The disease “must be
incidental to the character of the business, occupation or process in which the
employee was employed and not independent of the employment.” Id. The
disease “need not have been foreseen or expected but after its contraction it
must appear to have had its origin in a risk connected with the employment and
to have resulted from that source as an incident and rational consequence.” Id.
If the disease “follows from a hazard to which an employee has or would have
been equally exposed outside of said occupation,” it is not compensable as an
occupational disease. Id.
Chapter 85, governing work-related injuries, does not define the term
“injury.” In Perkins v. HEA of Iowa, Inc., 651 N.W.2d 40, 43 (Iowa 2002), the
Iowa Supreme Court filled in that gap, stating:
An “injury” is distinguished from a “disease” by virtue of the
fact that an injury has its origin in a specific identifiable trauma or
physical occurrence or, in the case of repetitive trauma, a series of
such occurrences. A disease, on the other hand, originates from a
source that is neither traumatic nor physical . . . .
5
(quoting Noble v. Lamoni Prods., 512 N.W.2d 290, 295 (Iowa 1994)). The court
continued:
[A] personal injury, contemplated by the Workmen’s Compensation
Law, obviously means an injury to the body, the impairment of
health, or a disease, not excluded by the act, which comes about,
not through the natural building up and tearing down of the human
body, but because of a traumatic or other hurt or damage to the
health or body of an employee. The injury to the human body here
contemplated must be something, whether an accident or not, that
acts extraneously to the natural processes of nature, and thereby
impairs the health, overcomes, injures, interrupts, or destroys some
function of the body, or otherwise damages or injures a part or all of
the body. This is the personal injury contemplated by the workers’
compensation statute.
Id. at 44 (quoting St. Luke’s Hosp. v. Gray, 604 N.W.2d 646, 650-51 (Iowa
2000)). Pertinently, the court stated contraction of a disease will be deemed an
injury if it is due to some unexpected or unusual event or exposure, such as “the
germs gaining entrance through a scratch or through unexpected or abnormal
exposure to infection.”
Id. at 43-44 (quoting 3 Larson’s Workmen’s
Compensation Law § 51, at 51-1 (2002)).
The deputy workers’ compensation commissioner, whose findings were
adopted by the commissioner, determined that Burress “was exposed to
brucellosis in an event that occurred unexpectedly.” The deputy further found
that “[t]he event, most likely a cut to claimant’s hand and exposure to the blood,
was sudden, traumatic and of a brief duration.” Addressing the risk of contracting
brucellosis in a meatpacking plant, the deputy stated,
It might be said that workers in a hog packing plant have a
greater than average risk of contracting brucellosis, but that risk is
the result of risk from a traumatic injury under circumstances that
result in infection of the disease as a consequence of trauma.
6
The deputy also found “no evidence that employees who work in hog packing
plants are routinely subject to brucellosis” and “no evidence that brucellosis is a
disease known to be incidental to the employment of people who work in hog
packing plants.” We review these findings for substantial evidence. See Iowa
Code §17A.19(10)(f); Asmus v. Waterloo Cmty. Sch. Dist., 722 N.W.2d 653, 657
(Iowa 2006) (reviewing “outcome determinative findings of fact” for substantial
evidence); Meyer v. IBP, Inc., 710 N.W.2d 213, 218 (Iowa 2006) (“A question of
fact is presented by the operative events that give rise to the injury,”
manifestation of injury is fact-based inquiry, but whether injury arose out of and in
the course of employment involves application of law to facts); West v. Phillips,
227 Iowa 612, 619, 288 N.W. 625, 628-29 (Iowa 1939) abrogated on other
grounds by Hanson v. Reichelt, 452 N.W.2d 164, 168 (Iowa 1990) (stating
ultimate facts were whether decedent received an injury arising out of and in the
course of his employment).
The agency finding that Burress sustained an injury is supported by the
following language in Dr. Nauseef’s opinion letter:
It is important to emphasize that B. suis is confined to domestic or
feral swine and the cause of abattoir-associated infections when
swine are the animals processed. The portal of entry is through
abrasions in the skin, most commonly during handling of infected
animals or their carcasses. There is risk of aerosol transmission in
slaughter houses as well, although this appears to be less
common.
We recognize the same letter could have supported a finding that
Burress’s brucellosis was an occupational disease, as Dr. Nauseef also stated
Burress was “exposed to blood products and tissue from the slaughtered hogs”
and “this exposure [was] the ideal setting for acquisition of Brucella suis” during
7
the course of his employment at the IBP plant.
However, “[i]t is the
commissioner’s duty as the trier of fact to determine the credibility of the
witnesses, weigh the evidence, and decide the facts in issue.” Arndt v. City of Le
Claire, 728 N.W.2d 389, 394-95 (Iowa 2007). The commissioner chose to accept
the evidence indicating that Burress contracted the infection through an abrasion
in the skin as opposed to a generalized exposure to hog blood. This was his
prerogative.
Nor does it matter that Burress could not state when he sustained a cut or
abrasion. The date of injury may bear on questions relating to which of several
employers might be liable for the injury or on statute of limitations questions. See
Meyer, 710 N.W.2d at 221; Perkins, 651 N.W.2d at 44. The date does not bear
on whether Burress sustained a traumatic injury while working for IBP. On that
question, the agency found he “most likely” did. That finding is supported by
Burress’s testimony that he stuck his finger with a knife while “dropping [hog]
heads.”
Finally, we are not persuaded by IBP’s argument that chapter 85A
governs because it addresses brucellosis. See Iowa Code § 85A.11 (prescribing
tests that shall be used to confirm disease). The preliminary step is to determine
whether a condition is a disease. Noble v. Lamoni Prods., Inc., 512 N.W.2d 290,
294 (Iowa 1994) (noting threshold proof of disease was a prerequisite to recovery
under Chapter 85A).
Only after that determination is made, can the
commissioner determine whether the condition is governed by Chapter 85A.
That chapter does not mandate that, as a matter of law, all diagnoses of
brucellosis be treated as occupational diseases.
8
III. Disposition
The commissioner’s determination that Burress suffered an injury rather
than an occupational disease is supported by substantial evidence. The district
court’s finding to the contrary is reversed.
REVERSED.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
