The Boundary for Work-related Injury and Non-work-related Injury

Mr. Chen is the salesman at company Shadow (“Shadow”). One day, Mr. Lee whom was the client of Shadow invited Mr. Chen to play cards. A few hours later, Mr. Chen lost 20,000Yuan in gambling, and Mr. Chen promised to pay the money within 1 month. 1 month later, Mr. Lee asked for payment for several times, but Mr. Chen refused to pay. Mr. Lee went to Shadow to negotiate, however, both parties could not make an agreement and ended fighting with each other, Mr. Chen was injured, and his colleague Mr. Wong who tried to mediate was injured too. Later, both of them applied to be identified as work-related injury, but ultimately only Mr. Wong’s injury was identified as work-related one. What makes the difference?

“Regulation on Work-Related Injury Insurances” Article 14, 15 and 16 have stipulated the occasions for work-related injury, being deemed as work-related injury, and non-work-related injury, but these articles cannot list all the details of such occasions hereinabove. In practice, in order to identify work-related injury correctly, we have to analyze case by case for special occasions.

In this case, Mr. Chen insists that he gets injured in an accident at work during working hours in the workplace, which has been stipulated in Article 14. The occasion under Article 14 requires 4 items, namely the “working hours”, “workplace”, “work reasons” and “accident”, and “work reasons” is the key factor. For “work reasons” related to injuries can be divided into two categories: 1)the direct reason, which means the employee is injured in the work due to the work of labor engaged in; 2) the indirect reason, which means the employee is injured because of the unavoidable, and work inextricably linked, mandatory, eligible physiological needs. In judicial practice, the principle of presumption of “work reasons” is always applied. This principle refers to the occasion that an employee is hurt during working hours, in workplace, if there is no evidence to prove that the employee is hurt due to non-work reasons, the injury the employee suffers from is attributable to the work.

In this case, Mr. Chen insists that he gets injury due to the debt related to the client. However, on the one hand, Mr. Chen played cards with client maybe deemed as gambling, which is an illegal action rather than the proper work needs, and it is unable to meet the criteria of direct or indirect “work reasons”; on the other hand, from the view of Shadow’s management, no matter if this is prohibited in the rules and regulations of the company, “playing cards” shall not be identified as the proper business behavior, it may violate the rules and regulations of the company, and the company may have the right to apply punishment on such action. Therefore, Mr. Chen’s injury shall not be identified as work-related injury. As for Mr. Wong, although he is not required to mediate the fight, he tried to reduce the risk of personal and property safety in the workplace, and his injury should be identified as work-related injury.