On September 17, 2010, Ricardo Ruel, a journeyman electrician and employee of the Lubbock Electric Company (LEC), moved and replaced wiring to increase the power of a fan motor at the Slaton Cotton Gin. After rewiring the motor, he and Victor Rotramel, a master electrician and co-worker, were replacing a cover on a trough that contained live wiring when an electrical explosion occurred and injured both of them. Ruel was taken by EMS to a nearby hospital where he was treated for electrical burns. Prior to treatment, Ruel provided a urine sample that tested positive for benzoylecgonine, a cocaine byproduct that remains in the human body after the drug is metabolized. A subsequent, more detailed analysis confirmed the test results. Other than the urinalysis, neither Ruel's EMS nor hospital records indicated that he exhibited any abnormal behavior.
Ruel filed a claim with the Texas Department of Insurance, Division of Workers’ Compensation. Based on his urinalysis results, LEC's insurance carrier, Bituminous Fire & Marine (Bituminous), denied coverage, asserting that Ruel was intoxicated at the time of the accident. A contested case hearing was held and the hearing officer determined that Ruel was intoxicated at the time of his injury and that his injury was not compensable. The Texas Workers' Compensation Commission Appeals Panel affirmed the hearing officer's determination. Ruel then sought judicial review of the appeals panel's final decision.
At trial, Ricardo Villareal, Ruel's supervisor, testified that he spoke to and observed Ruel on the morning of the accident while Ruel was drinking coffee and loading trucks. Villareal testified that he noticed “[n]othing out of the ordinary ... [Ruel] seemed normal to me, fit for duty, like an everyday person.”
Ruel testified that on the Tuesday night before the Friday morning accident, he did two lines of cocaine at various times during the night and drank six beers. He took Wednesday morning off work because he was hung over but showed up at work after lunch. He worked Thursday and testified that on Friday morning he had normal use of his mental and physical faculties.
An expert witness for Bituminous stated that the effect of the cocaine that Ruel took on the Tuesday was amplified by the alcohol he consumed and, based on the results of his urinalysis, Ruel was intoxicated at the time of the accident. However, during cross-examination, he agreed that he could not identify the quantity of cocaine or the way that Ruel ingested it. As a result, it was not possible to do a retrograde extrapolation. He also agreed that a urine test alone could not determine a person's specific behavior at a given point in time.
Note: Retrograde extrapolation is a concept where a blood-alcohol concentration (BAC) derived from analyzing a subject’s breath, blood, or urine sample at a certain point in time can be extrapolated back to a theoretically higher BAC that existed at the time of an earlier incident. This is done by adding to the BAC at the time of the test the product of the hourly rate of alcohol elimination from blood and the number of hours that elapsed between the time of the incident and the time of the test.
After he reviewed Ruel's urinalysis results and medical records, Ruel’s rebuttal expert stated that he could not determine whether Ruel had normal use of his mental or physical faculties at the time of the accident. He stated that a toxicologist would need more information than a urinalysis to determine whether a person was intoxicated from cocaine ingestion at any particular time. He testified that the effects of cocaine vary from person to person and depend in part on the amount of it and the way it is ingested. He also testified that the effects of cocaine last only a few hours and, after several days passed, he “seriously” doubted whether anyone could distinguish whether someone had used cocaine at all.
The jury found that Ruel was not intoxicated at the time of his injury. The trial court then issued its judgment finding that Ruel was not in a state of intoxication at the time he was injured, that he suffered a compensable injury, and that he was disabled beginning September 18, 2010, through January 28, 2011. Bituminous appealed.
On appeal, Bituminous asserted that the evidence that Ruel was not intoxicated at the time of the accident was legally insufficient. Bituminous also contended that Ruel did not sustain a compensable injury and did not incur a disability because he was intoxicated at the time of the accident.
The Court of Appeals of Texas, Amarillo disagreed. It noted that, under the Texas Workers' Compensation Act, an insurance company is liable for compensation for an employee's injury if the injury arises out of and in the course and scope of employment, without regard to fault or negligence. The court pointed out that Bituminous did not assert that Ruel’s injuries did not meet these requirements.
Under Texas law, an insurance company is not liable for compensation if an injury occurs while the employee is in a state of intoxication. The court stated that the issue in a compensation case that alleges intoxication by a controlled substance like cocaine is not whether the substance was to some degree, however slight, in the claimant's body at the time of the accident, but rather whether the claimant was physically or mentally impaired at the time the accident occurred as a result of having ingested the controlled substance.
The court stated: “Other than the urinalysis test results showing minimum levels of benzoylecgonine in Ruel's urine sufficient to trigger a positive result for cocaine use, there was nothing in his EMS or hospital records indicating Ruel's behavior was anything other than normal. … Accordingly, we hold that the evidence is legally sufficient to support the jury's finding that Ruel was not intoxicated from a controlled substance at the time his injury occurred.”
Bituminous Fire & Marine Insurance Co. v. Ruel. Tex.App. Amarillo. June 4, 2014. 2014 WL 2553348
