An unusual case laid open the unusual nature of Vermont's defense typically provided to employers when comp claimants are intoxicated when injured.

Last week Vermont's Supreme Court ruled in favor of a part-time mechanic's helper who “drank deeply” from a Mountain Dew bottle, thinking it contained the soda pop. But instead of Mountain Dew the bottle contained a caustic industrial cleaning chemical that severely burned his esophagus and stomach.

The bottle had been sitting on a counter at work for a week and a co-worker, thinking it had been abandoned, offered it to the claimant. The claimant took it home and after some beers opened the Mountain Dew bottle and took a big swallow.

An emergency room blood test showed he was drunk. So a labor commissioner ruled the employee was intoxicated when injured in 2006 and compensation was not allowed under Vermont law.

But in a split decision in Cyr v. McDermott's Inc., Vermont's Supreme Court reversed the labor commissioner's finding. The decision is available here.

First, the high court said the injury arose out of his employment because the act of accepting the bottle “put the mechanism of injury in motion.” The claimant was put in a “positional risk situation” when given the bottle at work.

Second, there was no indication he was drunk when given the bottle at work, the majority ruled in the 3-2 decision. So the court overturned the commissioner and remanded the case to determine whether the injury occurred in the course of employment.

The employer may still have a way out.

But the dissenting opinion provided interesting case observations.

“The facts of this case are unusual and extreme” and offer an example of the adage that “exceptional cases must not be permitted to beget bad law,” the dissent states.

The descent says that Vermont's intoxication exemption for comp benefits is unique because it disallows compensation for an injury caused by or during a worker's intoxication.

In contrast, most states that exempt or reduce benefits when a claimant is drunk require a casual relationship between an employee's intoxication and the injury.

So Vermont law does not require a connection between an employee's intoxication and the injury. And while the majority concluded that the claimant's injury was cased by taking the bottle home, the injury was also caused by drinking from the bottle when the employee was drunk.

Both events contributed to the injury, the dissent said.