Collapsed while playing badminton during training
Death due to cardiac arrest due to subarachnoid hemorrhage
Bereaved family claims past job stress
Law: “It is difficult to acknowledge overwork and stress”
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A court ruled that a teacher who collapsed and died while playing badminton with friends near his home during a training period cannot be considered an accident in the line of duty.
According to the legal community on the 12th, the 13th Administrative Division of the Seoul Administrative Court (Presiding Judge Jin Hyeon-seop) ruled that the plaintiff lost in November last year in a lawsuit filed by Mr.
Teacher A was receiving training in accordance with Article 41 of the Educational Public Officials Act around February 2023. During the training period, Mr. A suddenly collapsed while playing badminton with acquaintances at a badminton court near his home and was taken to the hospital, where he died of cardiac arrest due to subarachnoid hemorrhage. The bereaved family requested payment of bereaved family benefits from the Ministry of Personnel Management, claiming that Mr. A’s death was a public service accident, but the decision was not approved on the grounds that a causal relationship between the corporal and the public service was not recognized.
Accordingly, the bereaved family filed an administrative lawsuit. The bereaved family claimed, “Mr. A has suffered considerable mental stress in the educational field throughout his teaching career. In particular, he suffered extreme stress when it was revealed that the principal had illegally installed a camera in the female faculty and staff bathroom while working at School B.”
However, the court did not accept the bereaved family’s argument. The court heard that Mr. A had not worked any overtime in the six months prior to the onset of his illness. The court pointed out, “After finishing the closing ceremony in January 2023, he did not perform work for about a month until February 10 of the same year due to the winter vacation,” and added, “It is difficult to say that he suffered from chronic excessive work around the time the sickness in this case developed.”
The court acknowledged that there were some stress factors in the past, such as illegal filming incidents at work, but judged that it was difficult to view these as factors that caused the disease. The court ruled, “In this case, there is no data to show that anything unusual occurred to Mr. A, such as an unexpected and difficult to predict work-related incident or a drastic change in the work environment, around the time of the onset of the illness.” In addition, based on the fact that Mr. A was 57 years old at the time and suffered from the underlying disease of high blood pressure, the court explained, “It is difficult to rule out the possibility that the pre-existing cerebral aneurysm ruptured as blood pressure rose due to intense physical activity.”
