Amputee who intentionally lit firework does not qualify for comp

An appeals court in Connecticut ruled Tuesday that a municipal worker cleaning up fireworks debris who intentionally lit the wick of a live explosive was not in the scope of his employment when he suffered a serious hand injury.

The worker testified that he thought the unlit firework was a “smoke bomb” and that he intended to light it and throw it across the road, according to Bassett v. Town of East Haven et al., filed in the Appellate Court of Connecticut on Tuesday. The incident occurred in July 2018.

The sphere “instantaneously . . . exploded while he was holding it,” resulting in ‘catastrophic, life-altering left hand amputation injuries,’” court documents state.

The worker, an adult supervisor of a program that employed teenagers, said he lit the firework because he did not want it to harm the younger workers. He also testified that prior to the incident “he had never come across fireworks while supervising the program and that he ‘had not been instructed what to do if he did come across any,’ although he had been instructed to call the fire department if he found needles or syringes.”

The Town of East Haven denied his workers compensation claim, arguing that his “injuries did not arise out of his employment.”

The appellate court, in affirming earlier rulings by the Compensation Review Board and the Workers’ Compensation Commissioner for the Third District, stated that both “reasonably support the factual determination that the plaintiff’s injuries did not arise out of his employment. The commissioner found that the act of ‘cleaning up the debris off the ground was within the scope of the (plaintiff’s) job duties,’ however, the act of ‘lighting the wick of the sphere was not within the scope of the (plaintiff’s) job duties.’”