Some employers require prospective employees to undergo a physical exam before they are hired. This makes sense since some jobs do require a little more physical stamina than others and both employee and employer need to be sure the candidate can do the job without risking their own safety. One such would-be employee was injured during her mandatory pre-employment physical exam, and the courts decided she could not receive workers’ compensation for it, as she was not yet an employee when she was injured.

In Kentucky, Michelle Rahla had a written job offer from the Medical Center at Bowling Green, depending on her passing a pre-employment drug-test and physical. During the physical exam she was asked to perform a Functional Capacity Evaluation. Since her job would sometimes require her to life heavy objects she was asked to lift several objects weighing between 10-61 pounds. She lifted a heavier object and felt pain in her neck. She did not tell the examiner and continued with the rest of the physical and the drug-test. She passed both and was hired by the Medical Center.

Her neck pain lingered and soon after starting her new job she had neck surgery and missed a lot of time. She was fired because she missed so many days. She sought workers’ compensation, which her employer denied because they said at the time of her injury she was not their employee. An Administrative Law Judge upheld that decision, and when she appealed the Workers’ Compensation Board agreed. The case went all the way up to the Supreme Court of Kentucky, where it was decided that her injury was not compensable. She was not employed at the time of the injury; she was only hired after she completed it and was told about these terms by the Medical Center. Also, taking the physical exam did not serve to benefit the Medical Center or their business even if it was a prerequisite to employment, and Rahla was not compensated for her time spent taking the exam.

She cited a case Hubbard v. Henry which did take place in Kentucky, in which a prospective employee offered to work as a timber cutter on a trial basis for a few days without pay and then if the employer was happy with his work they would hire him. The man was injured during this trial period and the court did determine he was eligible for workers’ compensation benefits as the employer was benefiting from his service, and he was actually performing work at the time of his injury. The court did not think Rahla’s case was similar to that case because she was not performing work and her employer did not realize a benefit from her taking the tests.

Though Rahla was able to point to other cases where this kind of pre-employment injury was compensable, they were in other states. Kentucky’s work comp laws do not include pre-employment screenings in workers’ compensation coverage.