Virginia: Repetitive Trauma Generally Cannot Support Comp Claim

A Virginia appellate court reiterated the general rule that in order to recover under the state’s Worker’ Compensation Act, a claimant must demonstrate an “identifiable incident” or “sudden precipitating event” that results in an “obvious sudden mechanical or structural change in the body.” Accordingly, the Court held that the Commission appropriately found that a claimant failed to prove his shoulder injuries were compensable where his testimony showed that on the day of the alleged injury he repeated the same combination of movements to rotate and move 14 smart boards, each weighing between 28 and 48 pounds, back and forth from two sides of a room. Adding that in Virginia, a gradually incurred injury usually cannot be “an injury by accident” within the meaning of the Act, the Court affirmed a denial of the claim.

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

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Daggett v. Old Dominion Univ., 2018 Va. App. LEXIS 243 (Sept. 25, 2018)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 50.01.

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