Perfume-Aggravated Pre-Existing Condition Found Compensable
Jon Gelman, Esq., publisher of Workers' Compensation: Analysis of Trends and Developments in Workers' Compensation Law Throughout the United States, recently blogged about a New Jersey case in which a nurse was awarded workers' compensation benefits for a pre-existing pulmonary condition that was aggravated by exposure to perfume at work.
The facts of the case, as described by Gelman, are truly remarkable: The nurse was a 64-year-old woman who smoked one pack of cigarettes a day for more than 40 years, and, not surprisingly, suffered from a severe pre-existing obstructive lung disease when she began working for the employer. Subsequently, in the course of her employment, she had a severe reaction when a co-worker sprayed herself with perfume on two occasions, and she eventually became "oxygen dependent" and was forced to stop working.
According to Gelman, the court found that "[t]he air [that the nurse] had to breathe . . . to fulfill her contract of service, contaminated by a co-employee, was a condition of [her] employment . . . and thus a risk of "this" employment." For this reason, the court ruled that the nurse suffered a compensable injury that entitled her to workers' compensation benefits. Not surprisingly, the court also explained that "[e]mployers take their employees as they find them, 'with all of the pre-existing disease and infirmity that may exist."
