A store manager who experienced an armed robbery may be able to receive workers’ compensation for her mental injuries, an en banc Commonwealth Court panel has ruled, but a portion of the panel raised the question of whether such events at work could ever be considered normal.
In a unanimous Feb. 20 opinion, the en banc panel said the workers’ compensation claim in Murphy v. Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board should be remanded to a workers’ compensation judge following the 2013 decision in Payes v. Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board. That precedent said mental injury claims caused by a work-related incident and not by a physical injury resulting from the incident should be evaluated case-by-case as to whether the event was an abnormal working condition.
