Virginia’s highest court has ruled that a man injured while lifting his arm to block ice being thrown at him by co-workers at a Manassas restaurant is entitled to worker’s compensation under an arcane rule known as the “horseplay doctrine.” The state Court of Appeals and the state Workers’ Compensation Commission had previously ruled against Matthew Edward Simms, who was employed as a server at Ruby Tuesday in Manassas when the incident occurred.
During Simms’ work shift, three other employees started throwing ice at him, and when he felt ice hit the back of his head, he turned around, lifted his left arm and felt his shoulder dislocate, according to court documents.
A deputy worker’s compensation commissioner concluded that Simms was the innocent victim of horseplay perpetrated by employees, and awarded him a four-day period of temporary total disability. But Simms’ shoulder had dislocated several times before that, and the deputy commissioner found that the surgery and following period of temporary total disability was not proven to be work-related.
But the case has been sent back through the Court of Appeals and has now been remanded once again to the state Workers’ Compensation Commission, according to Chief Deputy Commissioner Jim Szablewicz.
Both sides appealed to the full commission, which reversed the deputy commissioner’s decision. Simms then went to the Court of Appeals, which ruled that even though he was an innocent victim of horseplay, the injuries did not arise from his employment.
The Court of Appeals cited a state Supreme Court decision where an emergency medical services worker was severely injured and later died “when a co-worker turned on the power to a manual cardiac defibrillator, adjusted its energy to 150 joules, and touched the defibrillator paddles to her left shoulder and left breast, while simultaneously activating them,” in which the court found that the injury did not arise from employment.
But the Virginia Supreme Court disagreed with that interpretation because it considered the defibrillator incident an assault, according to the opinion from Justice S. Bernard Goodwyn.
“Pelting a co-worker with ice particles in a playful manner is readily distinguishable from … assaults,” Goodwyn wrote.
