A kitchen worker carried a large pot of hot tomato sauce down a flight of basement stairs, lost his balance, and fell. He was burned over 40% of his body. At the emergency room, his blood alcohol content was .281.
He won his workers’ compensation claim, and in May 2025 the Appellate Division affirmed.
That outcome surprises most people, including a fair number of injured workers who never file because they assume drinking ends the conversation. It does not, and the reason is a single word in the statute.
What the statute actually says
Workers’ compensation is a no-fault system. Workers’ Compensation Law § 10(1) requires employers to pay for injuries arising out of and in the course of employment “without regard to fault as a cause of the injury” — with narrow exceptions. The relevant one bars compensation where the injury was:
“solely occasioned by intoxication from alcohol or a controlled substance of the injured employee while on duty.”
Solely. Not partly. Not substantially. Not “he would not have fallen if he were sober.” The intoxication has to be the whole explanation for the accident, and if anything else contributed, the exception does not apply.
As the court put it, that intoxication may have been a contributory factor does not bar compensability.
The presumption, and who has to prove what
This is the part that decides these cases, and it is the part most people do not know exists.
Section 21 lists things the Board must presume “in the absence of substantial evidence to the contrary.” Fourth on that list:
“That the injury did not result solely from the intoxication of the injured employee while on duty.”
So the law starts from the position that intoxication was not the sole cause. The injured worker does not have to prove sobriety. The carrier has to rebut the presumption, and the courts describe that as a heavy burden: a denial stands only where all the evidence and the reasonable inferences from it allow no other reasonable conclusion than that intoxication was the sole cause.
That is a demanding test. Any other plausible explanation for how the accident happened defeats it.
Why the kitchen worker won
A .281 reading is not a close call as a matter of intoxication. It was still not enough.
The worker testified about how the accident happened: he moved the pot down the stairs step by step, and the weight and balance of it caused him to lose his footing. The Board credited that account. Once it did, there was an explanation for the fall that was not “he was drunk” — a heavy, awkward, top-full pot of hot liquid carried down a staircase.
The court held that the fact the claimant was intoxicated at the time of the accident, by itself, does not preclude the presumption of compensability and is insufficient to show the accident occurred solely because of his intoxication.
The blood alcohol number proved intoxication. It did not prove causation. Those are different things, and the statute asks about the second one.
Breaking a workplace rule is a separate question — and not a defense
The employer also argued the worker had been told not to carry the pot.
That argument does not go anywhere in this system, and the court said so plainly: the misconduct of an employee, even willful disobedience of the rules of the workplace, has no bearing upon whether an injury is compensable.
This catches people out constantly. You were not supposed to be on that ladder. You skipped the lift. You did it the fast way instead of the right way. None of that is a compensation defense. The statute cares whether the injury arose out of and in the course of employment, not whether you followed the handbook.
Who testifies matters
One more detail from the case is worth carrying forward.
The employer’s evidence about the worker’s condition and about the supposed instruction came from a manager who was not present when it happened. The Board rejected that testimony as hearsay.
Carriers routinely build intoxication defenses out of what someone heard afterward — a supervisor repeating what a coworker said, an accident report written by a person who arrived later. Someone who was actually there, or evidence that speaks for itself, is a different matter. The distinction is often the case.
What this does not mean
It would be dishonest to read this as a rule that intoxication never matters.
The defense exists in the statute and it does sometimes succeed — generally where nothing about the work explains the accident and the only available account is the worker’s condition. The exception also covers controlled substances, not only alcohol, so a positive post-accident drug test raises the same fight. See our page on medical marijuana and workers’ compensation if that is the issue.
Expect the claim to be controverted, expect a hearing, and expect to testify. What the case shows is that the fight is winnable, not that it can be skipped.
If this is your situation
- File anyway. The single most common way to lose this case is to decide in advance that you cannot win it and never report the injury.
- Be able to explain the accident mechanically. What you were carrying, how heavy it was, what the surface was like, what gave way. That explanation is what defeats a sole-cause argument.
- Do not volunteer conclusions about your own condition. Describe what happened. Whether you were impaired is a legal question with a presumption attached, not something to concede in a recorded statement.
- Expect the blood alcohol number to appear. Hospital triage records come into the file. Its presence is not the end of the claim.
- Rule violations are not fatal. If you were doing something you had been told not to do, that does not by itself defeat the claim.
- Get representation before the hearing. These turn on testimony and on what evidence the Board credits, and those are decided once.
Our workers’ compensation page covers how claims are established generally. If the carrier is arguing you injured yourself deliberately rather than that you were impaired, that is the companion defense under the same statute — see what happens when the carrier says you hurt yourself on purpose.
Talk to a New York workers’ compensation attorney
People talk themselves out of valid claims over this more than over anything else. A blood alcohol reading in the hospital record is evidence of intoxication. It is not, on its own, evidence that intoxication caused the accident, and the law puts the burden on the carrier to prove the difference.
Call (718) 701-2776. The consultation costs nothing, and you will speak with me.
Matter of Zamora Ramales v Frank and Nino’s Pizza Corp., Appellate Division, Third Department, May 29, 2025, Docket No. CV-24-0636; Workers’ Compensation Law §§ 10(1), 21(4).
We handle workers’ compensation claims for injured workers throughout the five boroughs and across New York State. If we don’t recover money for you, we don’t get paid.
Nothing on this page is legal advice about your own claim. Whether a claim is established depends on the evidence in the individual case.
