Spain, Jerez de la Frontera Labor Court (No. 3), 13 May 2022, Judgement 232/2022

Case overview

Country
Spain
Case ID
Judgement 232/2022
Decision date
Deciding body (English)
Jerez de la Frontera Labor Court (No. 3)
Deciding body (Original)
Juzgado de lo Social No. 3 de Jerez de la Frontera
Type of body
Court
Type of Court (material scope)
Labour Court
Type of jurisdiction
Single jurisdiction system
Type of Court (territorial scope)
Local Court
Instance
1st Instance
Area
Industrial relations / Labor law
Further areas addressed
  • Healthcare management (Covid related, excluding vaccination)
  • Use of protection devices
Outcome of the decision
Claim upheld
Link to the full text of the decision
Decision_ES available on poderjudicial.es
General Summary

The Jerez de la Frontera Labor Court (No. 3) had to decide whether the death of a cleaning service worker from Covid-19 at the Jerez de la Frontera Hospital was, in legal terms, a work accident or not. Given the dates and possible place of contagion, the Court held that there was a strong presumption in favor of it being legally considered a work accident which was not properly disproved by the plaintiffs.

Facts of the case

A cleaning service worker of the Jerez de la Frontera Hospital was diagnosed in March 2020 first with nasopharyngitis and then with Covid-19. He was granted temporary disability to work. He died in April 2020. Social Security considered his death a common contingency (not a work accident) when granting an orphan’s pension to his son. His son then challenged the classification and sought a declaration that his death was a work accident.

Type of measure challenged
Labor law dispute.
Measures, actions, remedies claimed
Declaration of an employees’ death as a work accident in order to recalculate the amount of the orphan’s pension given to the son
Individual / collective enforcement
Individual action brought by one or more individuals or legal persons exclusively in their own interest.
Nature of the parties
  • Claimant(s)
    Private individual
  • Defendant(s)
    Public
Type of procedure
Ordinary procedures
Reasoning of the deciding body

The matter at issue was to determine whether the situation that led to the employee’s temporary inability to work derived from a work accident (the claimant’s argument) or from a common illness (the plaintiff’s argument). In this regard, the Court recalled that, according to General Social Security Law, injuries caused to workers during working hours or at their place of work are presumed to be work accidents. It is therefore the plaintiff who should disprove the presumption, which did not happen in this case. The Court explained that the employee worked in the cleaning service of the hospital seven days prior to his first diagnosis with nasopharyngitis. Four days later, the entire dermatology staff was infected with Covid-19. The time frame thus coincided, especially considering that no relatives of the employee were infected with Covid during that same time period. As a consequence, the Court determined that it was highly likely that the infection took place in early March at the hospital, thus his death was considered a work accident.

Conclusions of the deciding body

The Court determined that the death of the cleaning service worker from Covid-19 should be considered a work accident since the infection was presumed to have occurred during his working hours and at his place of work.

Fundamental Right(s) involved
  • Right to bodily integrity
  • Right to health (inc. right to vaccination, right to access to reproductive health)
Rights and freedoms specifically identified as (possibly) conflicting with the right to health
right to work/right to life (not expressly mentioned)
General principle applied
Rule of law
Author of the case note
Professor Patricia Garcia Majado, Assistant Professor of Constitutional Law, University of Oviedo