Court denies civil servant sex-injury compensation

Australia’s highest court ruled on Wednesday that a civil servant injured during a hotel-room sex romp during a business trip in 2007 was not entitled to workers’ compensation.
The ruling ends six years of legal wrangling over whether injuries sustained when a glass light fitting was pulled from a wall were work-related.
The Administrative Appeals Tribunal first denied compensation on the grounds that the civil servant’s injuries were not work-related.
This was reversed in 2011 by the Federal Court, which awarded her compensation and costs.
The full bench of the Federal Court then overruled that decision, prompting an appeal to the High Court, which on Wednesday dismissed the initial appeal.
That latest ruling found in favour of the government, noting that as her employer, it “had not expressly or impliedly induced or encouraged the applicant’s sexual conduct’’ and that sexual intercourse “was not an ordinary incident of an overnight stay like showering, sleeping (or) eating’’.
The High Court said the woman, who cannot be named, “was involved in a recreational activity’’.
She met an acquaintance for dinner at the hotel after which the pair had sex in her room.
The initial Federal Court ruling was that she should get compensation for the slight facial injuries she received and for the psychological injury she said she had suffered.
“If the applicant had been injured while playing a game of cards in her motel room, she would have been entitled to compensation,’’ the lower court had ruled.
The High Court did not rule on who should pay the substantial legal costs

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