Illinois: Teacher Recovers for Injury Sustained in After School Basketball Game

An Illinois appellate court reversed a decision by a county circuit court and reinstated an award of benefits to a state middle school science teacher, who suffered a left forearm fracture while participating in an afterschool student/teacher basketball game in the employer’s gymnasium. The court indicated there was sufficient evidence to support the Commission’s finding that the activity had not been “voluntary” on the part of the teacher, in as much as his principal asked him—on three separate occasions—if he was going to participate and based further on the teacher’s perception that he would suffer professionally if he failed to join in with the activity. In particular, the teacher testified that at the time of the planned event, he had not yet received a contract to teach for the next school year and had not received his annual performance review. The teacher felt that, if he refused to participate, he would get on the principal’s “bad side.” The appellate court said that under the circumstances, the teacher had not engaged in a “voluntary recreational program,” as that term was defined by the state’s Workers’ Compensation Act.

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 Calumet Sch. Dist. #132 v. Illinois Workers’ Comp. Comm’n, 2016 IL App (1st) 153034WC, 2016 Ill. App. LEXIS 774 (Nov. 10, 2016)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 22.02.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see