In December 2006, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that due to a worker’s extreme negligence in his own work injury, he would not be eligible to receive full Worker’s Compensation benefits for his injuries. The teenager was fired from a KFC after he cleaned a gas pressure cooker using a method that super-heated water within the appliance – an act that was expressly forbidden. When the teenager removed the lid of the fryer, steam shot out burning him and two other employees.
“You were warned one time previous to the accident by [supervisor] Adrian LeBlanc … not to fill the fryer with water for cleaning, as this could result in injuries,” the work injury report reads. “Also, on the night of the accident, you were instructed, by your supervisor, to drain the water from the fryer.” The accident report also mentions that a warning sticker on the fryer states that the lid should not be closed with water or cleaning agents inside the cooker. However, “for reasons known only to you” the report continues, the employee ignored all warnings and ultimately injured himself and two others.
The KFC franchise owner petitioned the Industrial Commission of Ohio to stop disability payments on the grounds that willfully ignoring the rules was equal to voluntarily leaving the company since it was clearly stated that it was an offense that would get the employee fired. The commission agreed, but the teenager brought the case to the Franklin County Court of Appeals and had the decision reversed. Finally the Ohio Supreme Court supported the original ruling based on the grounds that willfully ignoring warnings is not the same as simple negligence. In other words, the teenager’s work injury was his own fault.
The case and the court ruling presents a number problems. Most importantly, it seems to ignore the fact that Workers’ Compensation is designed to remove all fault from accidents and support employees who have experienced job injury regardless of cause. In a dissenting paper, Justice Evelyn Stratton wrote that this puts the whole system on a “slippery slope” towards assigning blame. “[The employee] was a teenager at the time of the accident and, most likely, he was immature and naïve,” she wrote. “He suffered serious injuries as a consequence of his actions. However, the purpose behind workers’ compensation is to protect those who suffer work-related injuries regardless of their own negligence or fault.”
Even in this case, where the employee obviously caused his own work injury, it could still be argued that the shift supervisor could share in some or even most of the blame. The employee could have been suspended on the spot for attempting to break the rules, before the incident occurred. And, as the name implies, the supervisor is there to supervise – an especially important job when teenagers and youths are employed.