Labor & Employment Law

Employers must record injuries resulting from ?horseplay? at work

In a recent letter of interpretation addressing a common issue at work sites around the country, OSHA confirmed that injuries to employees sustained at the work site as a result of ?horseplay? are recordable on OSHA Logs, so long as the injuries also meet other general recording criteria (such as requiring medical treatment beyond first aid).

The interpretation stems from an incident described as ?horseplay gone badly.? At the end of a workday, two supervisors got into a physical confrontation while changing to go home. One supervisor pulled a knife and stuck the other in the arm, resulting in several sutures.

OSHA stated that the injury was recordable. First, because the injury resulted from an event occurring in the work environment, it was presumed to be work-related and none of the exceptions to this ?geographic presumption? applied. The exceptions include, among other things, injuries such as those resulting from an employee eating, drinking, or preparing food for personal consumption, those involving signs or symptoms that surface at work but result solely from a non-work-related event, and those caused by a motor vehicle accident occurring on a company parking lot while the employee is commuting to or from work. Second, because the injury required medical treatment beyond first aid, OSHA concluded that it satisfied the other recordability criteria related to severity.

OSHA dismissed as essentially irrelevant the issue of whether the injury resulted from activities that were ?not directly productive? to the employer?s work. OSHA also reiterated that there is no general exception under the record-keeping rule for violence that occurs at the work site.
Situations such as this are all too common in the workplace. Aside from taking steps to address violence in the workplace generally, employers must ensure that when an incident occurs and injury results, it is properly recorded under OSHA?s rules, if warranted.

Bradford Hammock, Esq.
For additional information, you may e-mail Mr. Hammock at: hammockb@jacksonlewis.com

NYPPL Comment: Horseplay may also result in disciplinary action being taken against the employee. For example:

1. The Corning City School District charged a teacher with using physical force against a student -- pinching the student with a pair of pliers. Disciplinary Hearing Officer James R. Markowitz did not accept the teacher's efforts to excuse the episode as merely classroom "horseplay" and suspended the teacher for two weeks without pay. [NYS Department of Education Disciplinary File 3310].

2. A number of off-duty practical jokes by a supervisor resulted the supervisor?s demotion and being placed on a disciplinary probation for six-months [Sguanci v Commissioner of Public Works, Broome County, 158 AD2d 788].

3. Playing practical joke with fake spider resulted in a teacher being suspended without pay for one-year [Decisions of the Commissioner of Education, 10842].

Full post as published by New York Public Personnel Law on June 26, 2009 (boomark / email).