I work with some great, friendly people. While in my 20+ year career I’ve seen some people that acted crazy, I’ve been fortunate to never work with a psychopath. Hopefully you are in that situation too.
Some people unfortunately have to work with nut jobs. I’ve seen more and more examples lately of people with real anger control problems.
In general if you and your co-worker get in a fight there are two things that matter when it comes to determining if you have a case or not:
1. Were you the aggressor? In other words, did you start it?
2. Were you fighting about work or something personal?
If you start a fight and get hurt, you lose. If you are fighting over a girl or about whether the Cubs or Sox are better (it’s the Cubs by the way) or about where to go for happy hour, it wouldn’t be a case. If the fight has to do with work productivity or your schedule, etc., you would have a case.
Now you can’t win Illinois work comp benefits for a fight if you start it. Sometimes though, when you work with a psychopath, you can win your work comp case when they attack you even if the fight had nothing to do with your job.
In a recent case, a plant manager was taking pictures of a worker with his cell phone. The worker asked him why and the manager didn’t respond. The worker went about his business and then out of the blue, without warning, the manager shoved him in to a forklift. He then pulled the worker to the ground and began choking him.
Apparently this manager has major anger control problems and had been in several fights at work in the past.
In ruling for the worker, the Court noted the manager was combative and emotionally unstable. Therefore all of the workers were at risk of injury from him due to being employed there.
So hopefully you don’t get in a fight at work, but if you do and you are attacked for no reason, you might win. And if you are attacked over your job duties you should especially win.
