Court rules that a job interview injury can be compensable

When is a “pre-employment evaluation” actually an employment relationship? According to a recent court decision, whenever it involves “actual work.”

In Gadalean v. SAIF, the claimant applied for a job as a truck driver. The trucking company’s owner sent him on a “safe driving test” to verify his abilities under “real-world” conditions. While disconnecting hoses at a real customer location, Mr. Gadalean fell and injured his hip.

Mr. Gadalean filed a workers’ comp claim, which SAIF denied. The Workers’ Compensation Board upheld the denial, and Mr. Gadalean appealed. The Court of Appeals reversed, reasoning that, because the employer put him to “work” in the form of an “actual delivery” for which the employer presumably had been paid, the employer had engaged him to perform services on its behalf. The court also concluded that “remuneration” for his services had to be implied under the minimum wage law.

The court’s decision creates a potential trap for unwary employers. Under the decision, any time an employer asks a job applicant to perform any kind of “actual work” to evaluate that applicant’s qualifications, an employment relationship is created.

So, does any such activity constitute “actual work”?

The court’s answer would appear to be “yes”—if a job applicant is “put to work” by the employer, “even if only for a brief period of time,” then that establishes an employment relationship. “[I]t does not matter that the parties did not agree to a remuneration. The [minimum wage] law requires it,” the court added.

So how can an employer test an applicant’s abilities without creating an employment relationship? They can still ask the worker to perform physical or mental tasks as part of an employment application; the employer just can’t do so by providing the worker with any “actual work” that generates any benefit to the employer.