An Arkansas appellate court held that the injuries sustained by a worker in a car accident on the way to the airport for work are not compensable because there was alcohol in his blood.

Jason Papageorge filed a workers’ comp claim against his employer, Tyson Shared Service Inc., for neck and spinal cord injuries he sustained in a one-vehicle accident driving from his house to the airport for a meeting that was out of state. He became a paraplegic in the accident.

The night before the accident Mr. Papageorge and his wife returned home from their honeymoon which involved a lot of travel. He had a 4:30 a.m. flight the following morning after they returned home at 8 p.m. the previous night and he woke up late and flipped his car on the way to the airport. He had to undergo neck and back surgery and is paralyzed below the chest.

He admitted to drinking on the last leg of their flight back home and said he had a couple beers while packing for his next journey. He had a blood alcohol concentration of 0.11 at 9:30 a.m. but said he had not been impaired because of alcohol, he had instead been going too quickly around a curve because he was late.

His claim was initially accepted but later rejected because he had tested positive for alcohol. Paramedics said they did not think he was intoxicated, saying he spoke clearly and did not smell of alcohol. Still, his claim was found unacceptable because he could not prove alcohol was not a substantial cause of the accident.

Arkansas code includes a statutory presumption that where alcohol or drugs are present, an employee is not entitled to compensation unless they can prove that the alcohol or drugs did not have a role in the injury or accident.

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