## Facts

- Holly Lynn Weiss obtained a temporary restraining order against her husband after repeated threats and harassment directed at her and their children.
- Weiss became employed by the City of Milwaukee and, as a condition of employment, provided her residential address and telephone number to the City’s payroll department.
- Weiss told a payroll clerk she feared her abusive former spouse and requested confidentiality; she was told there was a policy against disclosing employee information to private individuals.
- Weiss’s husband called the City, falsely claimed he needed Weiss’s address and phone number for a mortgage-related purpose, and a City payroll employee provided the information without verification.
- After obtaining the information, the husband resumed harassment and threats, including threats to kill Weiss and the children; Weiss alleged severe emotional distress.
- Weiss sued the City and the payroll employee for negligent infliction of emotional distress based on the disclosure.

## Issues

1. Whether Weiss’s emotional-distress injury resulting from the employer’s workplace disclosure of required employment information was an “injury” covered by the Wisconsin Worker’s Compensation Act.
2. Whether the injury arose out of and in the course of employment despite the immediate threatening conduct being committed by a nonemployee outside the workplace.
3. Whether the Worker’s Compensation Act’s exclusive-remedy provision barred Weiss’s common-law tort claim against the City and the payroll employee.

## Decision

- The Wisconsin Supreme Court affirmed summary judgment dismissing Weiss’s complaint.
- The court held Weiss alleged an injury covered by the Wisconsin Worker’s Compensation Act, including compensable psychological injury.
- The court concluded the injury arose out of and in the course of employment because the City required the information as a condition of employment and the disclosure was made by a City employee in the performance of payroll duties.
- The court rejected the argument that the husband’s conduct broke the employment nexus; the threats were treated as a foreseeable consequence of the workplace disclosure.
- Because the injury was within the Act’s coverage, the exclusive-remedy provision barred the tort action against both the employer and the employee acting within the scope of employment.

## Legal Principles

- When the statutory conditions for liability under the Wisconsin Worker’s Compensation Act are satisfied, the Act provides the employee’s exclusive remedy against the employer for the covered injury.
- Psychological or emotional-distress injuries may be compensable under workers’ compensation if they arise out of and in the course of employment.
- An injury can “arise out of” employment when it is causally connected to an employer’s handling of information required and obtained because of the employment relationship.
- Intervening misconduct by a third party does not necessarily remove an injury from workers’ compensation coverage where the employment-related act is a substantial causal link and the harm is a foreseeable result.
- Workers’ compensation exclusivity generally bars common-law negligence actions against employers and, in appropriate circumstances, against co-employees acting within the scope of their employment.

## Conclusion

The court held that an employee’s emotional distress allegedly caused by a city payroll employee’s negligent disclosure of required employment information was covered by the Wisconsin Worker’s Compensation Act, making workers’ compensation the exclusive remedy and barring a tort claim for negligent infliction of emotional distress against the city and its employee.


Weiss v. City of Milwaukee, 559 N.W.2d 588 (Wis. 1997)