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Intoxicated Worker Awarded Workers’ Compensation Benefits

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An employee fell from a narrow, eighteen foot high scaffold in the course of assembling a sheet metal roof. Even though there was evidence admitted at the trial that he had consumed a gallon and a half of hard alcohol, drank two beers that day and had a grossly elevated blood alcohol level of .29%, the accident was held compensable.

The court reasoned that the accident was caused also by the risk of work in addition to the alcohol consumption. The accident was partially caused while the workerwas attempting to fasten a defective assembly apparatus to the bridge of the scaffold. Therefore the alcohol consumption was not the sole cause of the accident. Warner v. Vanco Manufacturing, Inc. (App. Div. 1997).

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