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Court Grants No-Fault Access to Worker's
Comp Benefits, Regardless of Alcohol or Drug
Use
Statutes requiring injured workers to
prove cause of injuries violated
constitutional right to compensation for
job-related accidents
An Arizona statutory scheme enacted in 2000
required employees to affirmatively prove,
before they could receive worker’s
compensation benefits, that use of alcohol
or drugs did not contribute their injuries.
The laws were designed to limit liability
for workplace injuries in favor of employers
who maintain certified drug testing
policies.
Applying the statutes in two separate
construction injury cases, Grammatico v.
Industrial Commission (where an injured
worker-plaintiff tested positive for
marijuana, amphetamine and methamphetamine
use) and Komalestewa v. Industrial
Commission (where the worker-plaintiff’s
blood tests indicated the presence of
alcohol), resulted in a conflict between two
panels of the Arizona Court of Appeals. In
both cases, the employers raised the
statutory defense, which placed the burden
on the injured workers to prove that alcohol
or drug use did not contribute to the cause
of their injuries. The two panels differed
on whether the statutes providing the
defense conflicted with Arizona’s
constitutional provision that creates
worker’s compensation benefits.
Unconstitutional limitation on benefits.
The Arizona Supreme Court resolved the
conflict between the two rulings in August
2005. Its decision holds that the
application of the statutory scheme is
unconstitutional in cases where a necessary
risk of employment either caused or
contributed to the accident, and that the
claims in both cases were compensable. The
court explained its decision by reference to
the history of workplace injury actions and
the policy behind worker’s compensation.
History. Prior to the
enactment of worker’s compensation law,
employees were limited to pursuing damage
awards in negligence actions against their
employers, which were subject a variety of
defenses even if the employer was at fault,
if third parties or the injured worker
contributed to the cause. The result was a
scheme that was extremely expensive for both
plaintiffs and defendants and made the
plaintiff’s success nearly impossible.
Article 18, Section 8 of the Arizona
Constitution was enacted to provide workers
(and employers) in Arizona with an
alternative to common law tort actions.
No-fault. Worker’s compensation law
is designed to be a “no-fault” scheme:
neither the employee’s nor the employer’s
negligence affects compensation. The concept
of “fault” is the point at which the statues
and the Constitution conflict.
According to the Supreme Court, A.R.S. §
23-1021(D) interferes with the “no-fault”
scheme by requiring the injured worker to
prove that a necessary risk of employment
was the sole cause of the accident.
Similarly, the Supreme court reasoned that
A.R.S. § 23-1021(C), which precludes
benefits if the worker cannot prove that
alcohol was not more than a “slight
contributing cause” of the injury, requires
the employee to prove he was not at fault in
order to receive benefits. The two statutes,
concluded the Court, impermissibly inject
concepts of comparative fault into the
no-fault worker’s compensation system,
regardless of workplace dangers.
In order to recover benefits, a claimant
still must prove that the injury was
sustained in the course of employment, that
the accident arose out of and in the course
of the employment, that the accident caused
the injury, and that either a necessary or
inherent risk of employment caused or
contributed to the industrial accident or
the employer failed to exercise due care.
Drug-free workplace. While the ruling
is good reason for employers to worry about
becoming liable for all alcohol- and
drug-related injuries that occur on the job
site, the Court’s back-step from the
statutory scheme of five years ago is
limited, and incentives for maintaining a
safe and drug-free workplace remain.
Employers will still want to maintain a safe
work environment and a drug-free workplace
to reduce the risks of employment and on-the
job accidents that can give rise to claims.
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