A Pennsylvania worker who tried to save a man’s life and was injured doing so sought workers’ comp benefits but his employer argued that being a Good Samaritan doesn’t necessarily mean you deserve benefits.

Franklin Pound worked for Pipeline Systems Inc., and in July of 2010 he was working a job at a sewage treatment plant and saw a man fall into a concrete pit. Pound and two other people went to try and help him. Unfortunately the man was dead when they found him and as Pound was climbing out of the pit he was overwhelmed with methane gas and fell off the ladder. He hurt his left leg, knee, foot, ribs, lungs, back and head in the process.

Pound’s employer and insurer argued that Pound should not receive workers’ compensation benefits because he really was not acting within the course and scope of his employment by performing a rescue attempt instead of his assigned duties. His “compulsion to act as a Good Samaritan was not employment-related” they said. The judge in the case disagreed. He said that had it not been for his employment, Pound never would have been at the job site and tried to help that man. The judge also said that attempts to help another person do not mean that worker has “abandoned their employment” at that particular time.