Lunch or smoko break accident: NSW workers compensation guide

Lunch or smoko break accident can occur through slip, fall or vehicle incident during an ordinary break and injury while using a nearby break area or obtaining food. The incident history should identify the task, equipment, location and sequence of events rather than relying on the job title alone.

People commonly exposed include workers taking an ordinary meal, morning tea or rest break and workers temporarily leaving the immediate work area with permission. Employment records should identify each person's task, employer and position in the work area when the incident occurred.

Medical records after a lunch or smoko break accident may identify personal injury such as fracture, sprain, head or spinal injury and vehicle-related injury during the break route. Each diagnosis should be linked to the event or exposure and to the worker's actual functional change.

For a lunch or smoko break accident, the first evidence to preserve includes roster and evidence the worker attended the place of employment that day and usual break time, duration, permission, destination and expected return. It is most useful when dates, people, equipment, duties and later medical histories tell a consistent account.

• Route, purchase, CCTV, witness and incident records.
• Facts about the activity and any alleged abnormal risk.

After a lunch or smoko break accident, an insurer may dispute the worker did not attend the place of employment that day or had completed one shift before a separate later shift and the absence was not an ordinary recess or authorised temporary absence. The written decision should be answered with evidence directed to those stated reasons.

Medical evidence should identify the precise incident, diagnosed personal injury and onset of symptoms. Where a break involves a road crash, the history should also record vehicle, police and CTP details. If treatment is disputed after a lunch or smoko break accident, the request should explain the accepted diagnosis, expected functional benefit and reasonable alternatives.

Work capacity after a lunch or smoko break accident may turn on acceptance of a recess injury does not determine weekly-payment duration or earning capacity and medical evidence should address actual restrictions from the diagnosed injury. Proposed duties must be compared with the real task demands and the worker's ability to sustain them for the proposed hours.

WPI is assessed from stable, accepted medical impairment under the applicable NSW method; travel, collision, surgery or imaging does not create an automatic percentage. Each diagnosed body system must be assessed using its own clinical findings, and any pre-existing impairment issue must be addressed separately. Any WPI assessment after a lunch or smoko break accident occurs after stabilisation under the NSW method for the accepted body system; the accident or surgery alone does not determine a percentage.

A road crash during the break may also require a separate CTP claim and coordination with the workers compensation insurer. An unsafe café, footpath or other premises may raise a separate claim against the occupier, but fault and loss require individual assessment. These issues are separate from workers compensation and depend on the particular facts.

For a lunch or smoko break accident, assistance may involve identify the boundary of the place of employment and whether the worker was actually temporarily absent from it and preserve the roster, break practice, permission, route, timing and evidence of the activity that caused the injury. The purpose is to identify the disputed decision and the evidence needed for the next step, not to promise an outcome.