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."
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The Georgia Court of Appeals recently affirmed well-settled law when it held that a school bus driver was entitled to workers' compensation benefits for depression, anxiety, and an adjustment disorder, all of which she developed after suffering an asthma attack in the course of her employment with the DeKalb County Board of Education. In so ruling, the Court rejected the school board's contention that the bus driver, Tracy Singleton, suffered from only mild depression and anxiety.