## Facts

- Pamela R. Stovall performed repetitive seafood-processing work for Sally Salmon Seafood for about one year, including tasks involving repeated wrist and hand strain.
- During that employment, she experienced wrist and hand pain and swelling but did not miss work or seek medical care, using home remedies instead.
- Stovall later applied to Hallmark Fisheries and falsely denied any prior hand, wrist, or arm trouble on the application.
- Hallmark assigned her to repetitive hand-and-wrist work; after about two weeks, she developed similar but worse symptoms.
- In September 1984, while employed by Hallmark, Stovall sought medical treatment and was diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome.
- Medical evidence indicated the condition manifested during the first employment and was aggravated by the second, with the second employment contributing to the need for surgery.
- Both employers agreed the occupational disease was compensable but disputed which employer was responsible under Oregon’s last-injurious-exposure rule.
- Hallmark asserted that Stovall’s misrepresentation on the job application equitably estopped her from recovering against Hallmark.

## Issues

1. Under Oregon’s last-injurious-exposure rule, when two successive employments could have caused an occupational disease, which employer is responsible when disability and first medical treatment occur during the second employment?
2. Can an employer avoid workers’ compensation responsibility through equitable estoppel based on the worker’s pre-employment misrepresentation about prior symptoms?

## Decision

- The Oregon Supreme Court affirmed the Court of Appeals.
- Hallmark Fisheries, the second employer, was the responsible employer under the last-injurious-exposure rule.
- Equitable estoppel did not bar Stovall’s claim against Hallmark based on her false application answer.

## Legal Principles

- In occupational disease cases involving successive potentially causal employments, responsibility is assigned to the last employer whose working conditions could have contributed to the disease when the worker first becomes disabled and first seeks medical treatment during that later employment.
- A worker’s pre-employment misrepresentation about prior symptoms does not, in these circumstances, permit the later employer to defeat the worker’s statutory right to compensation through equitable estoppel where the disease is compensable and causally related to the work.
- Workers’ compensation liability allocation is governed by statute and related doctrines; equitable defenses cannot be used to negate that statutory entitlement in a manner inconsistent with the scheme’s compensatory purpose.

## Conclusion

The court placed liability on the later employer because the worker’s disabling condition and initial treatment occurred during the second employment that could have contributed to the disease, and it rejected equitable estoppel as a defense to a compensable occupational disease claim based on a false job-application statement.


Stovall v. Sally Salmon Seafood, 757 P.2d 410 (Or. 1988)