Beer-drinking UPS driver not entitled to comp: court

A United Parcel Service Inc. driver who crashed his semi into a guardrail after drinking beer while driving is not entitled to workers compensation for his injuries, a judge in Delaware ruled Friday.

Driver Mr. Willis crashed in Baltimore in June 2021, according to United Parcel Service v. Timothy Willis, which documented that he “typically packs a cooler of beers to celebrate the end of his shift… but on the day of the crash, he started early” while on his final drive from Pennsylvania to Maryland to drop off the trailer portion of his rig.

Reversing an Industrial Accident Board decision that granted benefits to Mr. Willis, a judge with the Superior Court of Delaware agreed with UPS’s argument that Mr. Willis should not have been compensated due to his “voluntary intoxication” at the time of the crash.

“Whether the employee was, in fact, intoxicated and, in turn, whether his intoxication proximately caused the crash are pivotal issues here,” the judge wrote, stating that the “Court finds the Board erred as a matter of law and abused its discretion by awarding compensation to the employee.

The judge wrote that the board’s conclusion that the employee was within the course and scope of his employment at the time of the crash was erroneous, adding that the “Board abused its discretion by excluding admissible, potentially probative evidence on a material issue and making factual findings based on speculation, rather than substantial evidence in the record regarding the employee’s intoxication and the cause of the crash.”

Allowing an intoxicated employee to recover compensation is “inconsistent with public policy prohibiting drunk driving,” the judge wrote.