Rydzewski v. Workers' Compensation Appeal Board’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

5 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Although a claimant in a normally highly stressful working environment such as a police officer may not have a higher burden of proof, it is often more difficult to establish abnormal working conditions in a job that is, by its nature, highly stressful. The claimant must establish that the incident that caused his mental injury is so much more stressful and abnormal than the already stressful incidence of that position. Although testimony may be presented that certain police officers have never witnessed horrible trauma and/or death, that testimony is not necessarily disposi-tive. The determining factor is what is extraordinary or abnormal for a person in the same “line of work”. When an individual claimant employed as a police officer has not previously encountered a particular type of event one may expect a police officer to become involved in, that experience is merely “subjectively abnormal for [the claimant.” Conversely, however, simply because an event has happened in the past does not mean that such an event is a normal part of a course of employment....”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Washington v. Workers' Compensation Appeal Board