Tennessee: Employer’s Failure to Use On-Site Defibrillator Does Not Mean Injury Claim is Compensable

A worker’s injury, in the form of brain damage due to oxygen deprivation following a non-work-related medical emergency, did not arise out of the employment in spite of the employer’s failure to utilize an automated external defibrillator (AED) to aid the employee, held the Supreme Court of Tennessee. The high court allowed that under the state’s emergency doctrine, an employer might be liable for workers’ compensation benefits if it failed to render reasonable medical aid to an employee who had become helpless at work. The court stressed, however, that the emergency doctrine could not be so extended as to require the employer to utilize an AED. Following the incident, the employer had summoned EMTs. While the employee’s injury had occurred in the course of the employment—she was on the premises when it happened—the injury could not be said to have arisen out of the employment.

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 Chaney v. Team Techs., 2019 Tenn. LEXIS 20 (Jan. 31, 2019)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 9.02.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see