Nebraska: Turning Ankle in Company Parking Lot is Not an “Unexplained” Injury

A worker who twisted her ankle when she took a step after exiting her vehicle in the employer’s parking lot did not sustained the sort of “unknown” cause of harm that would warrant the use of the positional risk doctrine to award her workers’ compensation benefits, held the Court of Appeals of Nebraska. Citing Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law extensively, the Court indicated the mechanism of the employee’s twisted ankle was not a mystery. While an injury resulting from an “everyday activity” could be compensable if the activity “constituted a risk contributed by employment,” nonstrenuous walking was the “epitome of a nonemployment risk.” Here, there was no evidence that the everyday activity of exiting a car, while carrying nothing heavier than a small lunchbox, was a risk of the worker’s employment.

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 Maradiaga v. Specialty Finishing, 24 Neb. App. 199 (July 19, 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