Last year we told you about an Australian government worker who was on a business trip when she was injured while having a tryst with a friend in the motel room where she was staying. She applied for workers’ comp benefits. Now, a court has decided the case.
A federal judge in Australia says pay her the comp benefits for the injury that occurred during the motel sex.
The worker, whose name has been withheld, was required to travel and stay overnight to attend a meeting the next day.
The woman arranged to meet a friend for dinner. After dinner, they went back to her hotel room and had sex. While that was happening, a glass light fixture fell off the wall and injured the woman. She suffered injuries to her nose, mouth and a tooth. The woman later filed a claim for having suffered facial and psychological injuries.
The claim was based on the argument that she suffered the injuries “during the course of her employment” because she was required to travel.
One court had denied the woman workers’ comp benefits because the tryst was “not an ordinary incident of an overnight stay like showering, sleeping and eating.”
However, on appeal, an Australian justice says sex is an “ordinary incident of life.”
“If the applicant had been injured while playing a game of cards in her motel room, she would have been entitled to compensation,” the justice wrote in his opinion. “The fact that the applicant was engaged in sexual activity rather than some other lawful recreational activity does not lead to any different result.”
It did not matter whether her injury “was expressly or impliedly induced or encouraged by her employer,” the justice opined. She was injured in the “course of employment.”
A lawyer for her employer (the government) had argued there wasn’t enough connection between the incident and what the woman was being employed to do. However, the justice rejected that argument.
What do you think about the court’s decision? Let us know in the Comments below.