Kansas: Employee Fails to Prove Peanut Allergy Related to Her Employment

A Kansas appellate court affirmed the denial of a worker’s claim that she had developed a peanut (or related) allergy while working at the employer’s candy factory, holding that the evidence supported the finding that she had failed to prove the required causal connection between her alleged allergy and her employment.  The appellate court indicated that, as noted by the ALJ, all objective tests were negative for peanut, nut, and metrin allergy, and no doctor who had examined the worker ever documented a physical reaction to peanut or nut products. The doctors who diagnosed the worker’s allergy did so based solely on her self-reported, uncorroborated history of exposures and reactions.  Thus, the doctors had no factual basis for their diagnoses of peanut and nut allergy. Likewise, the court indicated there was no evidence in the record of the quantity or quality of the worker’s exposure to peanuts and nuts at the employer’s facility and no basis for the doctors’ conclusion that the worker’s purported allergy was caused by exposure at work.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is a leading commentator and expert on the law of workers’ compensation.

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance. Bracketed citations link to lexis.com.

See Ribeau v. Russell Stover Candies, 2014 Kan. App. LEXIS 62 (Aug. 29, 2014) [2014 Kan. App. LEXIS 62 (Aug. 29, 2014)]

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 52.06 [52.06]

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

For more information about LexisNexis products and solutions connect with us through our corporate site