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Pot Smoking Worker Receives Benefits After Being Attacked by Bear

Posted on Jun 23, 2010

Too strange for fiction......

June 2010 Installment: The case of the Pot Smoking Worker Attacked by a Grizzly Bear -- this is no hallucination!

Scene: A bear park where visitors can walk trails and see bears in their natural habitat (separated by electric fences that hopefully work). Employee who feeds bears arrives at work.

Problem: Worker spent day smoking pot before arriving at work.

Result: A particular grizzly decides to attack worker while being fed, yikes.

An injured worker was attacked by a grizzly bear when he inexplicably wandered into the grizzly pen. Petitioner was attacked while performing a job Employer had paid him to do -- feeding grizzly bears.

A Pot-Smoking Worker was recently found to be entitled to benefits after a grizzly bear attacked him. Although a bear park workers decision to smoke marijuana before coming to work was mind boggling stupid he is still entitled to benefits after being attacked by a frizzly bear, so ruled the Montana Worker's Compensation Board (please note I fully agree with this decision - studpidity can and often should be compensable -- you get benefits for working and being injured...but read on, perhaps the pot actually helped this fellow.

Judge Shea noted in Hopkins v. Uninsured Employers Fund (naughty employer!) that alghough the worker was stoned, the worker was injured when the bear attacked (and could have happened no matter the injured workers state of mind).

Bottomline - this is the right decision. The purpose of Workers Compensation is to have a safe place to work. Its like denying a case because the worker is undocumented, if you are injured while working that is the test, not the status of the injured workers mind or immigration status. Now in NY use of drugs and alcohol can lead to a denial of benefits - but it must be the SOLE case -- I would venture to guess that even in the Empire State, this particular case would have turned out the same...perhaps it wasn't as bad for the injured worker because he couldn't feel it so much -- ouch!