## Facts

- Kim Stroka worked as a United Airlines flight attendant and received general safety and security materials, including FAA guidance addressing hijacking crises and job-related stressors.
- Stroka was scheduled to work United Flight 93 on September 11, 2001, but several days earlier requested and received that day off for personal reasons.
- On September 11, while off duty and engaged in personal activities away from any workplace, Stroka watched televised reports of the attacks and later learned that Flight 93 was the aircraft hijacked and crashed in Pennsylvania.
- Stroka was friends with several flight attendants who died on Flight 93.
- After learning of the hijacking and deaths, Stroka experienced acute distress and later developed panic symptoms and functional impairment.
- Stroka was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) and became unable to work.
- Stroka filed a workers’ compensation claim; a compensation judge awarded medical and temporary disability benefits and counsel fees.
- United appealed, conceding the PTSD was causally related to the September 11 events but disputing that it arose out of and in the course of employment.

## Issues

1. Whether a flight attendant’s PTSD, triggered while off duty by learning that the flight she had been scheduled to staff was hijacked and coworkers were killed, constitutes an injury “arising out of and in the course of” employment under the New Jersey Workers’ Compensation Act.

## Decision

- The Appellate Division reversed the workers’ compensation award and remanded for entry of judgment for United Airlines.
- The court held Stroka’s PTSD did not occur “in the course of” employment because she was off duty, off premises, and not subject to employer control when she encountered the triggering events.
- The court concluded the September 11 events, as experienced by Stroka through media and later information, did not constitute an employment risk encountered while performing job duties, even though her employment explained why the news was personally traumatic.

## Legal Principles

- A compensable workers’ compensation injury must both “arise out of” and occur “in the course of” employment.
- “In the course of” employment is assessed by the time, place, and circumstances of the injury, including whether the employee was engaged in work duties or otherwise within the employer’s control.
- Emotional or psychiatric injuries are not compensable merely because employment provides context; the statutory test requires the injury to occur within a work-connected setting rather than solely from exposure as a member of the general public.
- Being scheduled for a shift, without actually being on duty or in a work setting at the time of the triggering event, is insufficient to satisfy the course-of-employment requirement.

## Conclusion

Because Stroka was on an approved personal day off and experienced the triggering events away from work and outside United’s control, her PTSD—though directly related to the fate of her assigned flight and coworkers—did not arise in the course of employment and was not compensable under the Workers’ Compensation Act.


Stroka v. United Airlines, 835 A.2d 1247 (N.J. Super. Ct. App. Div. 2003)