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In a deeply divided decision, a Florida court reversed an award of benefits to a home-based worker (working in Arizona) who tripped over her dog as she reached for a coffee cup during a brief break in her daily work activities. The court agreed that the course and scope of the employment could be expanded to include injuries sustained while seeking personal comfort, but stressed that in any event the risk had to be a risk of the employment, not a risk that the worker faced equally in her normal life. Here, the risk that the worker would trip over her own dog in her own kitchen while reaching for a coffee cup was not a risk associated with her employment.
Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).
LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.
See Sedgwick CMS v. Valcourt-Williams, 2019 Fla. App. LEXIS 5350 (1st DCA, Apr. 5, 2019)
See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 21.01.
Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law
For a more detailed discussion of the case, see