Iowa Supreme Court Affirms Ruling in Firefighter Workers’ Comp Case

Article

The Iowa Supreme Court in mid-August affirmed a district court ruling that found a volunteer firefighter must be summoned to duty only through official channels and not by circumstances. The ruling came in a workers’ compensation insurance dispute between two insurance companies over a claim for volunteer firefighter Justin Fauer, who died in 2005 after he tried to save his boss from a manure pit on the cattle farm where they worked near Andover in Clinton County.

The farm’s insurance company, Grinnell Mutual Reinsurance Co., paid the claim but sought for it to be shared by the fire department’s insurer, Travelers Insurance Co., claiming Fauer also responded as a firefighter.

Fauer’s boss, Dwight Johnson, climbed into a manure pit at Johnson Valley Beef to retrieve a chain that had fallen into the pit and was overcome by methane fumes, court records show.

Fauer, a volunteer with Andover Volunteer Fire Depart-ment, ran to the house to tell Johnson’s wife to call 911. He returned to the pit where he climbed in and was overcome.

A deputy workers’ compensation commissioner ruled that Fauer responded to the emergency as both a farm hand and a volunteer firefighter because some of the injuries that led to his death occurred after he would have been notified in his capacity as a firefighter.

As a result, the commissioner found Travelers was responsible for one-half the benefits paid through the workers’ compensation claim. Travelers appealed but the commissioner ruled the timing of the notice to Fauer’s pager “was not critical to the determination of coverage … because Justin has been summoned to duty as a volunteer firefighter by the circumstances themselves.”

The commissioner determined that failure to allow volunteer firefighters to call themselves to duty would result in “deterring them from immediately rendering assistance upon encountering an emergency.”

Travelers sought a review and a district court rejected the commissioner’s ruling. It concluded a volunteer firefighter cannot be summoned to duty by circumstances, but can only be summoned by the fire department or some other official channel.

The district court ruled that Fauer could only have been summoned by a page from the emergency communications center, which was sent 1 minute 8 seconds after the emergency communications center received the 911 call, court records show.

The Iowa Supreme Court rejected Grinnell’s appeal.