Arizona: Court Adopts Larson’s “Friction and Strain” Doctrine for Workplace Assaults

Acknowledging its earlier adoption of the “quantum theory of work connection,” described in Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, under which the “arising out of” and “in the course of” tests are not independent, but joined together, an Arizona appellate court set aside a decision by the state’s Industrial Commission that denied workers’ compensation benefits to a state correctional officer injured in a fight with another officer at a state prison. An ALJ and the Commission determined that the assault was not work related and thus not compensable. Prior to the fight, there had been five separate incidents between the two officers. The ALJ and Commission found that the incidents were personal in nature and, thus, not work-related. The appellate court disagreed. Here, all the evidence indicated the two officers had contact only within the employment. They had no personal relationship outside their work. Utilizing the “friction and strain” concept discussed in Larson, the court said an assault is caused by the "friction and strain" of the employment when the parties have no personal contact outside of the employment. Under those circumstances, no other job-related factors beyond the relations and conditions created by the employment need be present to support an injury claim. The court added that the presence of a “cooling-off” period did not matter where the parties had no personal contact outside of employment. The question of compensability hinged on the relation between the employment and the attack. 

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law(LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance. 

See Ibarra v. Industrial Comm’n of Ariz., 2018 Ariz. App. LEXIS 122(July 31, 2018)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 8.01.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law