Background
Mohammed Bouayad was the general manager of a car rental kiosk located inside a hotel near Orlando International Airport. Shortly before midnight on June 28, 2019, while walking alone along a dimly lit outdoor walkway from his company’s kiosk to a nearby outdoor office — a routine he performed at the end of each shift while carrying rental agreements and cash — Bouayad was shot multiple times at close range by an unidentified assailant who never robbed him. The crime was captured on surveillance video but remains unsolved. Bouayad was working a late shift that particular night because he was training new employees, having recently terminated three workers for theft and drug use.
Bouayad filed for workers’ compensation benefits. His carrier, Normandy Insurance Company, denied the claim on the ground that the incident did not “arise out of employment” as required by Florida’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 440.09(1), Fla. Stat. After a final merits hearing, the Judge of Compensation Claims (JCC) awarded benefits, crediting expert testimony that Bouayad’s job duties — including firing employees and carrying cash late at night in an area with elevated crime — and the poorly lit, unsecured walkway exposed him to an increased risk of assault. The JCC found it more likely than not that the targeted attack was work-related, stemming from the termination of prior employees or another job-related issue rather than a personal dispute involving a man who had separately threatened Bouayad’s son.
The First District Court of Appeal reversed, vacating the award. The district court reasoned that the only “work performed” at the moment of the shooting was walking between two parts of the employer’s premises, and that walking itself did not cause the gunshot injuries — the shooter did. Under that framework, a third-party tortfeasor’s act could never satisfy the statute’s “occupational causation” element. The First District certified the question as one of great public importance, and the Florida Supreme Court accepted jurisdiction.
The Court’s Holding
The Florida Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Muñiz joined by five other justices, quashed the First District’s decision and remanded for reconsideration under the correct legal standard. The Court rephrased the certified question — asking simply whether a third-party assault of an employee acting within the course and scope of employment can be compensable under Florida’s Workers’ Compensation Law — and answered yes, so long as the claimant establishes work-relatedness.
The Court rejected the First District’s interpretation of “arising out of work performed” as requiring that the discrete task being performed at the moment of injury itself directly caused the injury. Relying on the statutory text, the Court explained that “arising out of” is broader than “caused by” and pertains to the employee’s entire occupation and work environment, not a single isolated task. The Court also held that the First District erroneously imported tort-causation principles into a no-fault workers’ compensation system, noting that § 440.39 expressly contemplates compensation for injuries caused by third-party tortfeasors, which would be rendered a nullity under the district court’s reasoning.
Reaffirming its 1980 decision in Strother v. Morrison Cafeteria, 383 So. 2d 623 (Fla. 1980), and decades of consistent appellate precedent, the Court held that work-relatedness in workplace assault cases can be established through either (1) proof of a work-related motive for the assault (such as robbery), or (2) proof that the employee’s overall job duties and work environment exposed him to an increased risk of assault. Proof of the assailant’s motive is not required. Because the First District categorically refused to consider Bouayad’s risk-exposure evidence under the correct standard, the Court remanded for a proper competent-substantial-evidence review.
Key Takeaways
- In Florida workers’ compensation cases involving workplace assaults, “arising out of work performed” requires a nexus between the injury and the employee’s overall employment — not proof that the specific task performed at the moment of injury physically caused the harm.
- A claimant can establish occupational causation through evidence of increased risk exposure from job duties or the work environment, even when the assailant’s identity and motive are unknown and the attack appears targeted.
- Proof of a work-related motive (e.g., a robbery) is sufficient but not necessary — dangerous work conditions that heighten susceptibility to assault are an independent and adequate basis for compensability.
- Assaults remain non-compensable where the animosity driving the attack originates entirely from the claimant’s personal or domestic life and the employment contributed nothing to it.
- The First District’s framework — under which a third-party tortfeasor’s act would always break occupational causation — was rejected as incompatible with both the statutory text and § 440.39’s express provision for third-party tortfeasor situations.
Why It Matters
This decision reestablishes and clarifies the work-relatedness standard for workplace assault claims in Florida, reversing what would have been a significant contraction of workers’ compensation coverage. Had the First District’s approach stood, employees injured by assailants — including during robberies, random attacks, or targeted violence — would have faced near-insurmountable barriers to benefits whenever the assailant’s act, rather than a job task itself, inflicted the injury. The ruling confirms that Florida’s no-fault workers’ compensation system evaluates occupational causation broadly, consistent with the remedial purpose of chapter 440.
For employers, carriers, and practitioners, the decision signals that risk-exposure evidence — including expert testimony about crime rates near a worksite, the dangers of late-night cash handling, lighting conditions, or the hazards of terminating employees — is legally cognizable and must be weighed in the compensability analysis. Workers in high-risk occupations or environments retain access to benefits even when the perpetrator of an assault is never identified and even when the motive for the attack remains unknown.