In Atascadero Unified School District v. Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board, (2002) 98 Cal.App.4th 880, the California Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, addressed the issue of whether an employee could receive workers’ compensation benefits for psychiatric injury caused by workplace gossip about the employee’s extramarital affair with a coworker.
FACTS
Carrie Geredes, a bus driver/instructor for Atascadero Unified School District, had an extramarital affair with a coworker. After the affair ended, Geredes became aware that coworkers, including the coworker with whom she had had the affair, were gossiping about the affair at work. Geredes filed a workers’ compensation claim alleging she suffered cumulative trauma psychiatric injury because of the gossip.
APPELLATE COURT DECISION
To recover workers’ compensation benefits, an employee must show that she sustained an injury that arose out of and in the course of employment. It is not enough to show that the employee’s duties “merely provided a stage” for the injury; the employment must play an active role in the development of the injury.
Applying these principles, the Court of Appeal held that, “as a matter of law, an injury caused by workplace gossip about an employee’s personal life does not arise out of employment.” Gossip about an employee’s personal life simply is not part of the employment relationship. Furthermore, even though Geredes and her paramour were coworkers and the gossip occurred at work, the Court determined that Geredes’s duties merely provided a “stage” for the injury but did not cause the injury.