Where an employer determined that there was inadequate parking for its employees immediately adjacent to its offices and arranged through its landlord to secure additional parking spaces in a nearby parking lot, and encouraged its employees to utilize those spots...
Quoting liberally from Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law , an Arizona appellate court affirmed a decision by the state’s Industrial Commission that found an employee’s injuries did not arise out of and occur within the course and scope of the employment because...
A hospital nurse’s unexplained fall while walking to lunch in a level, unobstructed hospital tunnel was compensable, held the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia in a memorandum decision. The Court’s decision follows that of the majority of American jurisdictions...
Stressing that “idiopathic” and “unexplained” were not synonymous, an Arkansas appellate court agreed with an ALJ’s decision denying workers’ compensation benefits to a worker who, after experiencing severe gastrointestinal pain at his employer’s premises, went...
Finding that the New Hampshire Compensation Appeals Board (CAB) had erred in its application of the so-called “increased risk” test in an unexplained fall case before it, a state appellate court reversed and remanded the dispute in order that further findings of...
A Kansas appellate court affirmed an award of workers’ compensation benefits to a Topeka hospital housekeeping employee who sustained injuries in two separate unexplained falls. The court was not persuaded by the employer’s argument that following a 2011 amendment...
A Maryland appellate court, indicating it was undertaking a case of first impression, held that the compensability of an injury to a home-based employee depended upon an examination of the factors involved in the so-called “Larson Three-Part Test” ...
A professional counselor, who sustained injuries when she tripped and fell over raised tree roots as she walked on the campus of a community college where she was to attend mandatory off-site training, did not sustain an injury arising out of and in the course...
Reversing a decision by a state Workers’ Compensation Judge (WCJ) that had ruled an employee’s injury, in the form of a fractured humerus, was not compensable because it did not arise out of and in the course of the employment, the Supreme Court of New Mexico ruled...
Citing Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law , the Supreme Court of Nebraska acknowledged that a vast majority of courts nationally had adopted the so-called, increased-risk rule, under which the effects of an idiopathic-caused fall are compensable if the employment...
Stressing the crucial difference between an “unexplained” fall and an “idiopathic” fall, a North Carolina appellate court affirmed the denial of benefits to a municipal worker who suffered injuries when he fainted and collapsed after getting choked on an e-cigarette...
The Supreme Court of Arkansas affirmed a finding by the state’s Commission that a grocery store worker had not shown that her brain injury arose out of and in the course of her employment where the worker claimed she sustained an unexplained, compensable fall and...
Where an employee sustained a broken hip in a fall at work, with no clear reason for the fall, but where the employee’s medical record indicated that she suffered from various medical conditions, including diabetes mellitus type II, thyroid disease, and neuropathy...
While a claimant certainly has the burden of proving compensability by a preponderance of the evidence, an injury that is unexplained and occurs in the course of employment is presumed, as a matter of law, to arise out of the employment. Accordingly, it was error...
A Virginia police officer was appropriately denied workers’ compensation benefits for an injury he sustained when he slipped on a stairway while investigating a potential burglary at a private residence. The appeals court, following Virginia’s “actual risk” rule...