Earlier this year, we reported on a business trip tryst that ended up in court. If you missed it, here’s what happened.
An Australia public servant (we’ll call her “Susan”) worked in the human relations section of a government agency. On a business trip, Susan had a rendezvous with a male friend in her motel room, which was booked by her employer. During their tryst, a glass light fitting above the bed was pulled from its mount, and Susan injured her face.
The woman filed a workers’ compensation claim for facial and psychological injuries. She was denied WC by ComCare, the workers’ compensation insurer for the Australian Commonwealth Government.
The Administrative Appeals Tribunal upheld ComCare’s decision, finding that sexual activity was “not an ordinary incident of an overnight stay like showering, sleeping, eating or returning to the place of residence from a social occasion elsewhere in the vicinity. Rather Susan was involved in a recreational activity which her employer had not induced, encouraged or countenanced.”
However, Federal Court Justice Joan Victor Nicholas overturned the ruling, finding that the injuries were suffered in the course of her employment, and she is entitled to workers’ compensation.
In the most recent development, the insurer appealed the ruling, and the case went back to court. On December 13, 2012, the Full Bench of the Australian Federal Court upheld Nicholas’s ruling, dismissing the appeal.