Virginia: Actual Risk Rule Sinks Utility Worker’s Claim

Stressing that the convergence of time and place are insufficient to support a compensable injury in Virginia, a state appellate court affirmed the denial of workers’ compensation benefits to a municipal utility worker who sustained back and leg injuries when, while performing his normal work routine, he stood from a squatted position, twisted to his right, and felt a pop in his back and fell to the ground. Stressing that in order to be compensable, the causative danger must be peculiar to the work and not common to the neighborhood, the court added that the danger or risk must be incidental to the character of the business and not independent of the relation of master and servant. Virginia clearly refuses to follow the positional risk rule, which would award benefits if the employee sustains an injury while performing his or her workplace duties.

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

See Nelson v. Town of Christiansburg, 2017 Va. App. LEXIS 248 (Oct. 3, 2017)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 3.04.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see