Oregon Employee Recovers Benefits Following Explosion of Energy Drink

In a case with a rather bizarre fact pattern, an Oregon appellate court affirmed a decision by the state’s Workers’ Compensation Board that awarded benefits to a painter who sustained an eye injury when the energy drink that he was preparing to drink exploded, causing the bottle cap to hit him in the eye [SAIF Corp. v. Chavez-Cordova (In re Chavez-Cordova), 314 Ore. App. 5, 2021 Ore. App. LEXIS 1132 (Aug. 18, 2021)]. Citing and quoting liberally from Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the court agreed that the injury did not arise from a risk that was personal to the painter in spite of the fact that he brought the drink to work. The court observed that the employer did not provide drinks to the employees, required that they take paid breaks, and that the risk the painter faced was sufficiently connected to the employment as to say it arose from that employment.

Background

Claimant worked for employer has a painter of new construction. He was required to stay on the work site during mandatory paid work breaks. In the absence of a place to sit during his break, claimant sat in the cab of his employer’s truck. He sustained an eye injury when, as he was opening an energy drink bottle, its contents exploded and the cap shot into his eye. The Workers’ Compensation Board determined that the claimant’s injury did not arise out of his employment and the claimant appealed.

Categories of Risk

Citing Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, current § 4.01, et seq., the Oregon appellate court noted that risks are generally categorized in three forms:

• Employment-related risks
• Personal risks
• Neutral risks

Here it was not disputed that the cause of the claimant’s injury was not an employment-related risk. The Board also rejected the employer’s contention that claimant had been injured due to a personal risk. The Board reasoned that the risk of the bottle cap hitting claimant in the eye was a neutral risk that was neither connected to the employment nor personal to claimant.

Imported Danger?

The court discounted the employer’s argument that the risk of injury was personal to the claimant because he brought the energy drink to work. The court said beverage bottles are ubiquitous in the workplace; it was skeptical of treating them as inherently dangerous objects or personal instrumentalities of risk [quoting Larson, § 9.03[5]].

Moreover, stressed the court, “[a]s Larson explains, even injuries caused by ‘imported’ risks can be compensable if there is some causal nexus to the employment” [Larson, § 9.03[3]]. The court continued:

Even assuming, as employer contends, that claimant's energy drink was an imported risk, claimant’s consumption of the drink had an employment connection. Because employer required claimant to take his paid breaks at the job site and did not provide drinks, bringing his own beverage was a feature of claimant’s employment. The board found that employer acquiesced in and contemplated that claimant would drink beverages while on his paid break, and that finding is supported by substantial evidence. Claimant’s injury occurred while he was engaged in that authorized act.

Based on the foregoing, the court concluded that the board did not err in determining that claimant’s employment placed him in a position to be injured and that the injury therefore arose out of the employment.