Work Accidents
Accidents at work: when the employee reimburses employer!
Two Greek Supreme Court decisions create legal precedents and recognize shared responsibility to an employee and provided the option to compensate the employer for damages caused due to an accident at work.
One case concerns a refrigerator truck driver who fell, during a maneuvering, on the parapet of the motorway and caused fire, destroying a large part of the vehicle and completely the load. The Court yielded 99% responsibility to the driver and theoretically the company may demand compensation for the damages. The Court was not persuaded that the cause of the accident was tire wear. Also did not accept that the accident is part of the business risk undertaken by the employer and that the driver, as experienced professional, had the sole responsibility!
The second decision concerns a driver who lost his life when the vehicle he was driving fell into a ravine. His relatives claimed compensation because the employee worked in overtime but the Supreme Court rejected a prior decision of the Court of Appeals which attributed 40% responsibility to the driver, due to the fact that he was not wearing a seat belt. They claimed that the issue of overtime did not contribute to the accident because the employee had 4 rest days before the accident.
Source: www.protothema.gr
