very interesting article

Heavy blogging and digging on an eight-year-old OSHA legend raises interesting questions about workers' compensation.
The story goes like this: Back in 1999 Marci Lyn Deutsch, a Florida phone sex operator, supposedly won a workers' compensation settlement alleging "she was injured after regularly masturbating at work." Her lawyer Steven Slootsky had claimed, according to reports, that she developed carpal tunnel syndrome in both hands because of repetitive self-gratification while speaking on the phone to customers as often as seven times a day. Deutsch had asked her employer CFP Enterprises for "$267 a week, based on her salary of $400, plus $30,000 to cover her medical bills after neurosurgery to relieve the pain in her hands." However, the case was settled for a "minimal" amount because "mediator Joseph Hand, a retired workers' comp judge, told her she'd have a tough time" winning.
While some consider this tale to be another example of America's "I sue, you sue, we all sue" culture, it seems unfair to say that just because someone derives pleasure from her job, it is frivolous to sue for an injury caused by that pleasure. After all isn't masturbatory carpal tunnel for a legal sex worker no different than typing carpal tunnel for a secretary? On the other hand, judges and juries might not be inclined to see it that way. After all, can you imagine a porn star attempting to get cash for a sex-related stress injury? Even in Australia, where prostitution is legal, "sex workers have entitlement to workers compensation for a work-related injury," but "[i]n practice this rarely occurs."
So as ridiculous as these cases may appear on the surface, they raise an important question that I'll throw out to you readers: Should the morality of one's job be called into question when interpreting employment law?
by Emil Steiner www.washingtonpost.com