An appellate court in Virginia determined that a woman only needed to prove her accident caused a single “sudden mechanical or structural change” to her body in order to collect compensation for any injury that was caused by the initial accident – she did not need to demonstrate this change for every part of the body in which she was experiencing pain in order for it to be compensable.

She had fallen at work and had ongoing pain in her shoulder, despite tests that failed to show an abnormality in her shoulder. Her employer initially denied her claim.

Kerri Handel worked as a teacher in the Alexandria City School District. She slipped on a puddle of hand sanitizer and fell on her right side. She filed a claim and indicated her right ankle, knee, hip, shoulder, neck and back were injured in the fall. She sought treatment and complained of pain in her right side, and her doctor concluded her pain was nerve related. She complained of pain in her shoulder and radiating all down her arm though there were no abnormalities detected in her shoulder when tests were performed.

Her employer awarded benefits for her right hip, neck, back, right ankle and knee but disputed her right shoulder and head injury claim. Deputy Commissioner Susan Cummins found that she had demonstrated the “necessary causal nexus” between her accident and right shoulder complaints and she had suffered an injury by accident to her shoulder and head.

Her employer appealed, claiming that she failed to prove a sudden mechanical or structural change in her right shoulder so her injury to her right shoulder was not compensable. In Virginia, a worker must show their injury was the result of an accident which they can do by proving an identifiable incident that occurs at some reasonably definite time, an obvious sudden mechanical or structural change to the body and a causal connection between the incident and the change in the body. The court determined her employer had only challenged that third part of the test and they did not find their challenge convincing. The requirement that an injured worker prove that they suffered a sudden mechanical or structural change existed to establish that the injury was related to an accident, and not the result of a gradual change over time. The employer didn’t argue that her injury was unconnected to the fall they argued it was not causally connected to a sudden change, so the court affirmed that her shoulder injury was a compensable injury by accident.

Read the case here.