EXTREME
LIMITS OF WC COVERAGE
By Dennis R. Kurth, Associate Attorney
Certified Workers' Compensation Specialist
There are many misconceptions about workers’
compensation insurance, what it is and what it covers. Most people have no contact with their
state’s workers’ compensation system until they or a family member have a serious
injury on the job and their family is affected directly. Sometimes what one finds out about workers’
compensation is surprising.
In a case that illustrates perhaps the extreme
limits of what kind of accidental injury workers’ compensation insurance might
cover and which arose in the context of ongoing national debate over second
amendment rights, the Arizona Court of Appeals in Naglieri v. Industrial
Commission (2014), suggested that an injury covered by the accidental
discharge of a collector’s military machine gun by an auto mechanic who was
cleaning and reassembling it on a slow afternoon with his employer’s implied
consent, was covered by the workers’ compensation law even though the injurious
activity had nothing whatsoever to do with the business of an auto repair shop.
The Court endorsed the imposition of workers’
compensation liability on the employer because the manager of the shop observed
the claimant working on the weapon, conversed with him about it and did not
stop him from doing it. Shortly after
the manager walked away, the firing rod came unhinged and shot through the
claimant’s eye nucleating it and penetrating his brain.
The injury occurred in a shop where the prevailing
culture was decidedly macho and pro-gun.
A worker might bring in a new gun and show it off like a woman might
show off a new baby. The district
manager of the employer, perhaps carrying his constitutional interpretation too
far, testified that every employee had a constitutional right to bring a gun
into the workplace and admitted to carrying a concealed weapon himself.
This unusual case illustrates the principle that if
an employer knows about a dangerous activity that a worker is engaged in at
work and does not stop it, the employer is responsible for any injury that
occurs to the worker from that activity.
Obviously, despite the current national debate over
second amendment rights, enlightened employers are best advised to consider the
ramifications of importing such unrestrained rights into the workplace with the
huge risks that entails. A strong written,
posted and enforced policy against such activity in the workplace would shield
employers from such liability in the future.
