Broken Leg Suffered in Horseplay Was Covered by Workers’ Comp

A worker broke his leg at work and filed a workers’ comp claim. Although the claim was initially accepted, the Board later denied it after an investigation concluded that the worker got hurt while he and a truck driver were playing “chicken,” thus removing himself from the course of his employment. The Appeals Commission noted that an injury sustained during horseplay can still be considered work-related if one of four criteria are met. Here, the worker’s actions didn’t interrupt production and he didn’t escalate the horseplay into a dangerous activity (the truck driver did). So it concluded that his injury arose out of and in the course of his employment and thus was compensable [Decision No. 2012-111, [2012] CanLII 5914 (AB WCAC), Feb. 3, 2012].