Who falls because of a private telephone conversation during a business trip, can not claim resulting injuries as an accident at work. This emerges from a judgment of the Hessian state social court in Darmstadt (file reference: L 3 U 198/17).
Although workers were insured against accidents on official business trips. However, it depends on whether the act leading to the accident, in connection with the professional activity at the foreign service place, the judges ruled on Thursday.
The claimant was a woman from Frankfurt am Main, who had participated in a professional congress in Lisbon in 2015 and then wanted to go on vacation in Portugal. The then 62-year-old suffers from a polio disease that can lead to paralysis. In order to pick up a rental car, she wanted to order a taxi. In the hotel room, however, the woman crashed on the way from the bathroom to the phone and suffered a femoral fracture.
The professional association refused to recognize the fall as an accident at work, since he had occurred in the private sphere of life. The plaintiff argued that she wanted to call a taxi to the airport. This process was in a significant relationship with the mission and therefore had been accident insured.
Court: Gear to the phone had private reasons
The Darmstadt judges dismissed the complaint: During a business trip employees are legally accident insured. But when the woman crashed in the hotel room, the congress had already been closed for 20 hours. She was also not on the return journey to her place of residence. The taxi to the airport they have ordered to pick up the car for their private vacation. Accordingly, the passage through the hotel room to the telephone had been of a private nature.
In addition, the woman had been exposed to the business trip in view of their deficiency symptoms due to their polio disease no special risks: According to the court, the parquet floor in the hotel room was not classified as particularly dangerous. Even missing handrails on the walls, there was no danger, because the plaintiff in their apartment also have no handrails.
How meticulously the boundaries between work and private sector are drawn when it comes to accidents at work, had just before a case at the Social Court in Munich shown: A plaintiff who had worked from home, wanted a fall on the way back from the domestic toilet than Claim occupational accident.
The court dismissed his claim: While workers are insured against accidents while going to the toilet at work, the protection in the home office does not apply. The reason: The employer has no influence on the safety of the facility.
