Virginia: Employee Who Blacked Out While Driving Could Not Establish Workers’ Compensation Claim

A Virginia appellate court affirmed the denial of a workers’ compensation claim filed by an employee, who spent 75 percent of her working time driving in a car provided for her by her employer, and who sustained injuries in a single-car rollover accident resulting in memory loss. The employee testified that as she was driving her vision diminished and started blurring. The next thing she remembered was crawling out of the car and hearing a bystander ask if she was all right. She alleged that her accident was caused by an idiopathic condition of blurred vision due to pre-existing migraine headaches. The deputy commissioner ruled that the employee’s accident was “unexplained” and denied her claim. The Commission affirmed. The appellate court noted that the employee’s medical providers were unable to identify any idiopathic condition existing at the time of the accident. The Commission did not accept as reliable the employee’s testimony that she experienced visual problems prior to the accident. On appeal, the court had to defer to this credibility determination.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is the co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Burney-Divens v. Community Corrections Admin., 2016 Va. App. LEXIS 145 (May 3, 2016)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 7.04.

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

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