Kansas: Providing Inadequate Urine Sample is Not Refusal to Take a Drug Test

The term “refusal,” as it is used in Kan. Stat. Ann. § 44–501(b)(1)(E)(2012), carries with it an element of willfulness, indicated a state appellate court recently. Accordingly, where an injured Kansas worker was unable to provide an adequate urine sample in a post-injury drug test at his employer’s job site, that failure did not constitute a refusal to comply with the company’s drug testing policy and it could not support a forfeiture of workers’ compensation benefits. The injured worker was taken by ambulance to a local emergency room where he was treated for severe pain in his left elbow. Upon his return to the employer’s premises, he complied with a request to submit a post-injury urine sample using a self-contained drug test collection cup. However, he did not provide enough urine to complete the test and the employer’s test administrator threw it away. The Court also noted that there was no evidence that the worker had been under the influence of alcohol or drugs at the time of the accident and the worker had volunteered to take a drug test while he was at the hospital.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is the co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Byers v. Acme Foundry, 2017 Kan. App. LEXIS 12 (Jan. 27, 2017)

(Jan. 31, 2017)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 128.05.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law