The self-insured employer appeals the compensation judge’s finding that the employee’s ankle injury arose out of her employment.  We affirm.

On September 17, 2011, Carol Kainz, the employee, was employed as a Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) for the self-insured employer, Arrowhead Senior Living Community.  Her job duties included dispensing medications, providing treatment to patients, and supervising certified nursing assistants.  The employee’s work was performed at the St. Michael’s Health and Rehabilitation Center, which housed both the nursing home and a rehabilitation center.

On September 17, 2011, after dispensing medications to her assigned patients, the employee needed to retrieve some supplies from inside a locked cage which was housed in the basement.  She opened a metal fire door to enter a lighted interior stairwell which led down from the main floor to the basement.  The door was unlocked.^[1]  The employee testified that the stairway was carpeted and consisted of two flights of steps separated by a short landing.  She described the stairway as “kind of steep.”  Photographs in evidence showed that there was also a short landing at the top of the stairs with a barred metal gate which could presumably be closed to further restrict access, although it was shown open in the photographs.  The employee testified that hand rails were present on both sides of the stairwell.

As she was going down the second flight of stairs, the employee’s ankle inverted and twisted, causing an avulsion fracture.  The employee testified that she was not carrying anything, but she was not holding onto a railing at the time she was injured.  On cross-examination, she acknowledged that a railing was “handy.”  She had not noticed any object on the stairway or defect in the carpet at the location where she was injured.  At the hearing, the employee was asked to mark a photograph of the stairs to show the location where the injury occurred.  The employee placed the mark near to where the railing appears to end on the photograph.

After the injury, the employee’s ankle was sore and beginning to swell.  She managed to go down the remaining stairs and returned to the main floor from the basement using an elevator.  Her supervisor wrapped her ankle and she was able to complete her shift.  She was subsequently treated for the fracture and was off work due to the injury from September 18 through November 7, 2011.

On November 15, 2011, the employee filed a claim petition seeking various workers’ compensation benefits.  The employer answered denying liability on the basis that the employee’s injury did not arise out of and in the course of her employment.

The matter came on for hearing before a compensation judge on July 31, 2012.  The judge found that the employee’s right ankle avulsion fracture arose out of the employment, and awarded temporary total disability benefits and medical expenses.  The employer appealed the award to this court.

The appeal was decided by a panel of this court, and a decision was issued on April 1, 2013 affirming the compensation judge’s findings.  The employer appealed our decision to the Supreme Court.  By Order filed March 10, 2014, the Supreme Court ordered that “the decision of the Workers’ Compensation Court of Appeals (WCCA) filed April 1, 2013, be, and the same is, vacated and the matter is remanded to the WCCA for further proceedings consistent with Dykhoff v. Xcel Energy, 840 N.W.2d 821 (Minn. 2013).”  The case on remand was reconsidered by a panel of this court.

The Workers’ Compensation Court of Appeals must determine whether the findings of fact and order are clearly erroneous and unsupported by substantial evidence in view of the entire record as submitted.^[2]  Substantial evidence supports the findings if, in the context of the entire record, they are supported by evidence that a reasonable mind might accept as adequate.^[3]  Fact findings are clearly erroneous if the reviewing court, looking at the entire evidence, is left with a definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed.^[4]  Findings of fact should not be disturbed, even though the reviewing court might disagree with them, “unless they are clearly erroneous in the sense that they are manifestly contrary to the weight of the evidence or not reasonably supported by the evidence as a whole.”^[5]  Questions of law may be considered by the Workers’ Compensation Court of Appeals de novo.^[6]

As a general rule, workers’ compensation benefits are payable “in every case of personal injury . . . arising out of and in the course of employment without regard to the question of negligence.”^[7]  The phrase “in the course of” refers to the time, place, and circumstances of the incident causing the employee’s injury, while “arising out of” requires that there be some causal connection between the employee’s injury and the employment.^[8]

In Dykhoff v. Excel Energy,^[9] the Minnesota Supreme Court held that the “in the course of” and “arising out of” elements must be evaluated entirely independently of each other, and invalidated a “balancing test”^[10] which weighed the respective strengths and weaknesses of both these factors as elements of a single test of work-connection.

It is undisputed that the employee was engaged in the course and scope of her employment at the time of the injury.  The sole issue, both below and on appeal, is thus whether the injury “arose out of” the employment.

After considering the testimony describing the stairway, and after examining the stairway photographs, the compensation judge concluded that this particular stairway “in and of itself under the circumstances” represented a hazard beyond that to which the general public is exposed, such that the employee’s injury arose out of the employment.^[14]

The appellant employer argues that the general public is regularly exposed to the risks inherent to descending stairways in the course of everyday life, so that a stairway in and of itself is not a special occupational hazard.  We note, first, that the increased risk need not be one which is unique to the employment.^[15]

Nonetheless, even assuming that the use of a stairway is not generally inherently dangerous or risky, we note that our supreme court has recently reiterated that “the ‘arising out of’ requirement can be satisfied even when the workplace condition connected to the injury is not obviously hazardous.” ^[17]  In discussing that point, the court cited with approval a case which is particularly relevant to the present facts:

Here, as in Kirchner, additional factors were present which potentially increased the risk of injury from the employee’s use of this specific stairway.  First, the employee described the stairs as “kind of steep.”  This description was supported by the photographs and is undisputed by the appellant employer.  In addition, the judge found that “no handrails were on that portion of the stairway where employee inverted and twisted her ankle.”  Applying the Minnesota Supreme Court’s holding in Kirchner, if we accept these findings as factually supported by the record, we cannot conclude that the compensation judge’s determination that the injury “arose out of” the employment was clearly erroneous as a matter of law.

The appellant employer contends, however, that the finding that there were no handrails on the portion of the stairs where the employee was injured is unsupported by the evidence.  We note that there was support for the judge’s finding in the photographic evidence, which a reasonable mind might interpret as showing the handrails ending at about the spot which the employee marked as the location of her injury.  The employer argues that the employee’s testimony conflicts with the judge’s finding.  That testimony was not extensive; specifically, the employee responded “yes, on both sides” to the question “are there railings?” and again responded “yes” to the question whether the railing was “handy.”  Although this testimony addresses the presence of handrails, it does not specify precisely how far they extended down the stairs.  Thus we cannot say that it clearly contradicts the judge’s finding that the railings ended before the bottom landing was reached.  Even if there had been a clear conflict in the evidence, the compensation judge was not required to give greater weight to the employee’s testimony than he gave to his interpretation of the photographic evidence.

We note, also, that there was no evidence to contradict the employee’s testimony that the stairs were “kind of steep.”  The judge apparently considered that factor alone sufficient to create an increased risk of injury, since his memorandum states that the absence of handrails at the lower end of the stairway made it “even more of a hazard.”  This phrasing suggests that the judge had found that the steep stairway itself presented a hazard, even absent the additional consideration of whether handrails extended for the full length of the stairs.

The appellant points to two other statements of fact in the compensation judge’s findings and memorandum which it contends were factually erroneous, and which it asserts require that the judge’s finding that the injury “arose out of” the employment should be vacated.  Specifically, the appellant disputes the findings that “the general public is excluded from using the stairs,” ^[19] and that the employee “caught herself from falling by steadying herself against the wall.” ^[20]

On examination of the record, we agree with the appellant that there was no evidentiary support for a finding that the employee caught herself from falling by steadying herself on a wall.  However, this factual error appears to us harmless.  What the employee did or did not do after the injury to prevent possible further injury has no relevance for the question of whether the injury that actually took place arose out of the employment.

As to the other alleged error, whether the judge’s statement was factually erroneous depends on the interpretation given to his phrasing.  The employee’s testimony made clear that this stairway was accessible only to staff, patients, and those members of the public who were admitted to the facility to visit patients.  It may be that the compensation judge’s statement that the stairs were not open to the general public was intended simply to reflect this distinction.^[21]  In any event, we see no logical reason why the “increased risk” standard requires that the site of a compensable work injury be a location to which the public has no access.  Thus we are unpersuaded that the finding that the stairs were not open to the public justifies reversal of the finding that the employee’s injury “arose out of” the employment.

The compensation judge’s determination that the injury arose out of the employment is adequately supported by substantial evidence in the record, and we must affirm.