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Virginia: Worker Fails to Prove Mysterious Fall Was Caused by Employment Conditions

November 28, 2014 (1 min read)

A Virginia employee could not recover workers’ compensation benefits for injuries she sustained when she fell backwards while sitting on a brick wall where she had been resting, held a state appellate court; she had failed to prove that the injury arose out of her employment. Testimony that the employee was hot and did not want to return to the enclosure where she worked, that the wall was approximately “seat height,” with a flat top about 12 inches wide, and that workers commonly sat on the wall supported her contention that the injuries occurred in the course of the employment. She had not established, however, that there was a causal connection between her work and her fall. She could not explain why she fell, said the court. Nor could she show that the fall was due to some inherent flaw or danger in the brick wall. While it was undisputed that the employee fell, the court indicated the evidence did not support the commission’s conclusion that a condition of the workplace caused the accident.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is a leading commentator and expert on the law of workers’ compensation.

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance. Bracketed citations link to lexis.com.

See G4S Gov’t Solutions, Inc. v. McDonald, 2014 Va. App. LEXIS 390 (Nov. 25, 2014) [2014 Va. App. LEXIS 390 (Nov. 25, 2014)]

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 7.04 [7.04]

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

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