Worker Entitled To Compo For Sex Injuries

A public servant was "in the course of her employment" when she was injured while having sex in a motel room while on a work trip, a judge has ruled.
He set aside a decision refusing her workers' compensation for facial and psychological injuries suffered when a glass light fitting came away from the wall above the bed as she was having sex with a male friend in November 2007.
The woman, who cannot be named, was in her late thirties and employed in the human relations section of a commonwealth government agency.
Her employer sent her to spend the night at a NSW country motel ahead of a departmental meeting the next day.
That evening, she met her friend for dinner before they had sex, during which the light fitting was pulled from its mount and fell on her.
In his statement, the man said they were "going hard" and he did not know if they bumped the light or if it "just fell off".
"I think she was on her back when it happened, but I was not paying attention because we were rolling around."
In the Federal Court on Thursday, Justice John Nicholas set aside an Administrative Appeals Tribunal decision rejecting her compensation claim.
The tribunal had found: "The 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 she was involved in a recreational activity which her employer had not induced, encouraged or countenanced."
But Justice Nicholas said the fact that the employer did not encourage her to engage in sexual activity did not mean that it disapproved of her doing so.
"If the applicant had been injured while playing a game of cards in her motel room she would have been entitled to compensation, even though it could not be said that her employer induced or encouraged her to engaged in such an activity," he said.
"In the absence of any misconduct or an intentionally self-inflicted injury, the fact that the applicant was engaged in sexual activity rather than some other lawful recreational activity does not lead to any different result."
The tribunal said the woman was engaged in a private activity.
But Justice Nicholas referred to another case where an employee who slipped while showering in her hotel room was found to have been injured in the course of her employment.
"Many of the activities which an employee might be expected to engage in during such a stay are engaged in private," he said.