An exclusion from compensation on the basis that the client submitted to a greater than usual risk of injury occurs twice within the SRCA.
The first is contained within S6(2) which deals with prescribed travel (i.e. between home and work) and refers to injuries where the client chose a risky route or interrupted the journey in a way that increased the risk of injury. Delegates requiring more information on the provisions of S6(2) should refer to section 18.2 [3] of this Handbook.
The second exclusion relating to unreasonable risk, derives from S6(3) which reads:
6(3) Subsection (1) does not apply where an employee sustains an injury:
if the employee sustained the injury because he or she voluntarily and unreasonably submitted to an abnormal risk of injury.
Unlike S6(2), S6(3) does not apply to travel claims, it only applies to injury sustained:
Note that, because of the drafting of S6(3), consideration of voluntary and unreasonable submission to an abnormal risk of injury will also arise where the client has been injured as a result of an act of violence (S6(1)(a)).
Note also that, where the Delegate decides that voluntary submission to an abnormal risk of injury has occurred, the investigation will conclude that the client's injury did not 'arise out of, or in the course of, employment'. In effect, the answer to this question is applied not only to S6(1) but also to the definition of 'injury' in S4(1).
'Abnormal' is defined in the following terms by the Concise Oxford Dictionary:
abnormal 1. Deviating from what is normal or usual; exceptional
An abnormal risk is a risk to which the employee would not usually be exposed, or the risk arising from an activity which is inherently dangerous.
Links
[1] https://clik.dva.gov.au/user/login?destination=node/20487%23comment-form
[2] https://clik.dva.gov.au/user/login?destination=node/20181%23comment-form
[3] https://clik.dva.gov.au/military-compensation-srca-manuals-and-resources-library/liability-handbook/ch-18-sport-and-fitness-activities/182-other-after-hours-fitness-activities
[4] https://clik.dva.gov.au/user/login?destination=node/20386%23comment-form