Does drug or alcohol use bar workers' compensation benefits?

A fork-lift driver, unloading materials from a semi-trailer on his employer’s loading dock, loses control of the fork-lift and drives off the loading dock.

At the workers’ compensation hearing, the claimant admitted that a urinalysis test taken at the hospital on the day of the accident revealed cocaine in his system.

His employer defended the worker’s compensation claim on the basis that claimant’s drug use barred him from receiving workers’ compensation benefits. The Arbitrator allowed recovery. He determined that the evidence presented did not establish that the claimant was intoxicated at the time of the accident or that his intoxication, if any, was the sole cause of the accident. The Arbitrator held that in order for compensation under the Act to be denied on the basis that the claimant was intoxicated, the level of intoxication must be such that it can be said, as a matter of law, that the injury arose out of his intoxicated condition and not out of his employment.

Finally, the Arbitrator said that intoxication which does not incapacitate a claimant from performing his work-related duties is not sufficient to defeat recovery of compensation under the Act, although the intoxication may be a contributing cause of his injury.

The legal principle is that drug or alcohol use do not automatically bar workers’ compensation benefits. However, employee use of any type of recreational drug or alcohol may seriously jeopardize both the employee’s job and his right to recover compensation benefits for a work-related injury. The only safe advice: DON’T

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