Help

BI’s Article search uses Boolean search capabilities. If you are not familiar with these principles, here are some quick tips.

To search specifically for more than one word, put the search term in quotation marks. For example, “workers compensation”. This will limit your search to that combination of words.

To search for a combination of terms, use quotations and the & symbol. For example, “hurricane” & “loss”.

Login Register Subscribe

Seriously injured stripper not entitled to workers comp benefits: S.C. appeals court

Reprints

A stripper seriously injured by a stray bullet fired during an altercation in the club where she was working is not entitled to workers compensation benefits because she was not an employee, South Carolina’s Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday.

The split 2-1 ruling in LeAndra Lewis vs. L.B. Dynasty Inc. upholds a workers compensation commission finding that she was a contractor and not an employee when she was shot in 2008 while dancing at the Boom Boom Room in Columbia, S.C.

She suffered serious intestinal, liver, pancreas, kidney and uterus injuries, and doctors removed a kidney, the opinion states. She also testified that the shooting left her unemployable as an exotic dancer.

Court records show that the Boom Boom Room did not have insurance, so the South Carolina Uninsured Employers’ Fund defended the case.

Among other arguments, Ms. Lewis claimed she was an employee when shot because the club controlled her activities, including telling her when to dance, what music to dance to and requiring her to “strive to get V.I.P. dances.”

But the appeals court rejected the arguments presented by her counsel as “creative presentation.”

“The extent to which an exotic dancer in the Boom Boom Room decides the manner in which she performs her dance to satisfy the club’s customers, according to the record in this case, is not subject to any limitation or control by the club,” the majority said.

But Justice Paul E. Short dissented, arguing the “totality of the circumstances” showed Ms. Lewis was an employee.

“I find the club exercised the sufficient amount of control over Lewis in the performance of her work to establish an employment relationship,” he wrote.