Idiopathic Falls and Injuries on the Job

As usual, I was at my desk prior to the office opening reading various articles about workers’ compensation matters throughout the U.S., when I came upon an article titled “Don’t fall down on the job in Texas; Employer’s don’t have to provide injury coverage.” As I thought, the main thrust of the article was about Texas’ law which allows employers to decide not to have workers’ comp coverage and instead make enables an employer to create their own hodgepodge of rules setting forth what will and will not be covered under certain situations. It is not a coincidence that Texas leads the nation in the number of work place fatalities. However, one of the cases discussed was one involving idiopathic falls at work, and I thought this would be a good item to discuss with regards to workers compensation in Alabama.

Idiopathic means a situation or illness which arises spontaneously or from an obscure or unknown cause. An idiopathic fall is when someone is walking and for no known reason, they fall. Knees do “give out” and buckle on their own from time to time (at least mine do) for no obvious reason; if this were to happen and a worker falls and suffers an injury while at work, workers compensation would not be responsible for said injury.

You have to remember that in order for an injury which occurs at work to be compensable, it must arise from the worker performing a job duty (or activity incidental to your job). If you slipped in a liquid, tripped on the carpet, bumped into a shelf and lost your balance-any injuries which resulted from said fall would be compensable under Alabama’s Workers Compensation laws, but injuries caused by falls that “just happened” are not work related, and therefore not compensable.

If you were hurt at work and you have any questions about an Alabama Workers Compensation claim, don’t hesitate to call and speak with one of the experienced Alabama Work Injury Lawyers at Powell and Denny today.

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Idiopathic Falls and Injuries on the Job