## Facts

- Jaroslav Hypl accepted a job to transport barrels of wire from Nogales, Arizona, to El Paso, Texas, with an overnight delivery deadline.
- Hypl began driving around 6:00 p.m. and was expected to deliver the load by 6:00 a.m. the next morning.
- Around 6:30 a.m., a police officer stopped Hypl on Interstate 10 near Deming, New Mexico, after observing erratic driving.
- Hypl was traveling westbound at the time of the stop and had not delivered the wire; he still possessed the load.
- The officer initially suspected intoxication but then observed Hypl was injured and obtained medical care.
- Medical evaluation revealed severe head trauma (including skull fracture and brain bleeding), requiring emergency surgery and resulting in a coma for several hours.
- Hypl suffered amnesia and could not recall how or when the injury occurred; there were no eyewitnesses.
- The Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) denied workers’ compensation benefits, finding Hypl failed to prove the injury arose out of and occurred in the course of employment and refusing to apply any presumption to assist proof of compensability.
- The Industrial Commission affirmed the ALJ’s denial on administrative review.

## Issues

1. Whether a worker whose industrial injury causes amnesia may receive a rebuttable presumption that an otherwise unexplained injury occurring within the time and space limits of employment arose out of and in the course of employment.
2. Whether the ALJ committed legal error by categorically refusing to consider such a presumption and effectively requiring proof of the injury’s specific mechanism despite injury-caused inability to testify.

## Decision

- The Arizona Court of Appeals accepted jurisdiction and set aside the award denying compensability.
- The court held the ALJ applied an incorrect legal standard by refusing, as a categorical matter, to consider a presumption analogous to the unexplained-death presumption.
- The court recognized that an employee who survives but cannot remember the accident because of the injury may be entitled to a rebuttable presumption of compensability if the injury is otherwise unexplained and occurs within the temporal and spatial limits of employment.
- The matter was remanded for further proceedings under the proper presumption framework, allowing respondents the opportunity to rebut with contrary evidence.

## Legal Principles

- When an injury is otherwise unexplained and the employee is unable to testify about its circumstances due to injury-caused amnesia, a rebuttable presumption may arise that the injury arose out of and in the course of employment.
- The presumption is conditioned on a threshold showing that the injury occurred within the time and space limits of employment.
- The presumption is rebuttable; the employer/insurer may defeat it with evidence of a substantial personal deviation or a non-work-related cause.
- The evidentiary rationale for the unexplained-death presumption applies when the industrial event deprives the claimant of testimony even if the claimant is alive.

## Conclusion

The court set aside the denial of benefits because the Commission failed to consider a rebuttable presumption of compensability for an unexplained injury where the claimant’s memory loss was caused by the injury and the objective circumstances could place the injury within employment time and space limits.


Hypl v. Indus. Comm’n of Ariz., 210 Ariz. 381, 111 P.3d 423 (Ct. App. 2005)