Does Virginia Workers’ Comp Cover a Back Injury from Lifting, Bending, or Twisting?

Yes, you can receive workers’ compensation for a back injury from lifting, bending, or twisting if two things are true. First, you can name the moment the injury happened. Second, the act of bending, turning, or lifting involved a work-related exertion. Many lifting claims denied in Virginia fail one of those two tests. This page explains what you must prove.    

I spent the first years of my career defending employers and insurers against lifting claims, and I have represented the workers bringing them for the past 14 years. My practice handles many cases involving back injuries from heavy lifting, bending, or twisting. This isn’t surprising given that overexertion is the leading cause of serious nonfatal injuries. The facts that decide these cases are small – often trivial details that neither you nor the claim adjuster considered important at first. Read this so you know what decides these lifting claims.

Lifting, bending, and twisting injuries at a glance

The two tests every lifting claim must pass.

Virginia covers injuries by accident arising out of the job, and a lifting injury must clear both parts separately. I’ve seen cases fail under both parts.

Test one: an identifiable incident involving lifting, bending, or twisting

You have the burden of showing an identifiable accident that caused the injury. The Supreme Court of Virginia has said the specific event must be “temporally fixed with reasonable accuracy.” City of Charlottesville v. Sclafani, Rec. No. 200791 (Va. Aug. 26, 2021). Simply doing work activity when your back starts to hurt is not enough; you must describe a specific lift, twist, or bend.

The precipitating event can last longer than a few seconds, or even a few minutes.

For example, in Van Buren v. Augusta County, Record No. 1975-15-3 (Va. Ct. App. July 19, 2016), the Court of Appeals of Virginia reversed the Commission’s denial of benefits. That case involved a firefighter who suffered a herniated disc in his cervical spine somewhere during a thirty- to forty-five-minute effort to rescue and move a 400-pound man who had fallen in the shower and broken his leg. The court treated Van Buren’s entire rescue effort as one “piece of work” and one event, not several discrete events. Therefore, the injury did not result from repetitive trauma.  

The length of time alone, however, does not determine whether the lifting injury occurred during a temporally precise period.

In Sclafani, the Court of Appeals rejected a “three hour test,” under which any work-related injury resulting from stress lasting less than three hours counts as an accident. It noted that such a test does not require a claimant to identify the specific causative event that resulted in the injury. The focus is “not on the specific time frame in which the accident occurred, but on the specific causative event that precipitated the accident ….” A four-hour period during which a claimant identifies multiple potential causative events and cannot identify which led to the injury will likely fail. However, Sclafani’s claim succeeded because the court found that the evidence identified a particular incident during that period.

These cases are why my firm asks every potential new client with a lifting injury if they can identify the specific item they had lifted when they first felt pain. I know many jobs involve repetitive movements, for example, removing packages from a conveyor belt or digging holes for fence posts, and that simply writing “lifting boxes” or “constant lifting” on the claim form makes sense to those unfamiliar with Virginia workers’ compensation. But this is repetitive trauma, and Virginia will not cover it.

If you can pinpoint exactly when you felt pain during these activities, though, you may still be able to receive workers’ compensation benefits. Think of it like cutting a rope. Each cut weakens the rope, but one final cut severs it. The lift where you felt pain is that final cut, and it is temporally precise enough to meet this test.

Test two: the lift was a risk of the job.

The second test catches many injured workers by surprise.

Virginia follows the actual risk test, under which everyday activities, by themselves, are not sufficiently work-related to prove entitlement to benefits. An injury is not compensable simply because it happened as part of your employment. You need something more. As the Court of Appeals said in Southside Virginia Training Center v. Ellis, Record No. 0659-00-2 (November 21, 2000): “Simple acts of walking, bending, or turning, without any other contributing environmental factors, are not risks of employment.”

These statements are why we have seen claimants denied benefits for back injuries resulting from bending over to tie their shoelaces (UPS v. Fetterman, 230 Va. 257, 336 S.E. 2d 892 (1985)) or picking up a piece of plastic pipe (Plumb Rite Plumbing Service v. Barbour, Record No. 1629-88-3 (July 25, 1989)).  

But it’s not all bad news for injured workers.

For example, the Court of Appeals affirmed an award of benefits to a certified nursing assistant who injured her back when she bent straight forward from the waist to help a woman from a wheelchair to a car. CJ Designs Inc. v. Williams, Record No. 1251-20-4 (Va. Ct. App. June 15, 2021) (unpublished). The court found the claimant’s injury occurred during a multi-step process: moving the wheelchair into position, bending over to scoop up the woman’s feet, and pivoting to place those feet in the car, with others helping, all as one continuous task that put the claimant in an awkward position.

You can also win your bending or lifting claim even if the item you lifted was light – the weight doesn’t matter. And even if you felt pain after the object left your hands.

A client of mine worked as an order picker operator in a Target warehouse in Hampton Roads. On the day of his accident, he squatted, lifted a box weighing less than ten pounds, stood up, turned, and put the box on the rack. He had to push the box toward the back of the shelf, which he did. Then, when he pulled his arms back, his back popped. He had nothing in his hands when he felt the pop.  

The employer argued that because the employee had nothing in his hands when he felt a pop, was not in an awkward position, and was not overreaching or performing any other strenuous tasks, the accident did not arise out of the employment.

The Commission disagreed with the employer and awarded benefits. It found that the employee’s injury resulted from “one continuous event that involved picking up a box and pushing it into place.” His work environment – squatting down, lifting, standing up, turning, reaching, pushing, then pulling his arms back – was a significant work-related exertion.

You can read the case here: Perryman v. Target Corporation, JCN VA00001622211 (April 22, 2020).

In awarding benefits to Perryman, the Commission relied on another case I won for a warehouse employee, Tokhi v. Wal-Mart Associates, Inc., JCN VA00001453177 (February 25, 2020). Tokhi lifted a 45-pound box from a conveyor belt, turned to his side, then dropped it to the floor while squatting. He felt pain when he got up. The Commission held these “actions constituted a sequence of strenuous physical movements, all part of the same maneuver, which constituted a significant work-related exertion providing the critical link to his employment.”

The line between winning or losing a workers’ comp claim for a lifting injury is thin. That’s why the first description of the lift matters more than the MRI. And why you should describe the entire sequence that led to the injury.

If true, describe the facts below to help you win your lifting case. In my experience, these details tip the scale in your favor.

• The weight of what you lifted, including whether it was heavier than you expected when you picked it up, or oddly shaped so that carrying it was awkward
• Whether you were in an awkward position when you felt pain – for example, overreaching, twisted, feet placed apart, bending.
• Whether you were performing the work-related activity in a cramped, cluttered, or obstructed space
• An unpredictable load: a patient who resisted the movement or fell, a child or toddler wiggling around, or a box whose items shifted inside
• Whether the lift involved squatting, bending, turning, reaching, pushing, or pulling that happened as one maneuver
• Whether the job required you to meet a quota and lift with speed or urgency
• Whether you were lifting with a co-worker who dropped the item, causing your body to jerk

Tip: I’ve spoken with many injured workers who can identify exactly what they were doing that led to the lifting injury, but start by focusing on the total lifting the job required. Usually they think this makes their lifting injury claim stronger. It doesn’t. Insurers love to hear about all the lifts the job required so they can deny the claim as arising from cumulative trauma, which Virginia does not cover.

The four ways insurers deny lifting claims

No identifiable incident. The most common. The insurer takes any vague language in the records that refers to lifting more than one thing and calls the injury cumulative. Address this by describing the specific event to your doctor from the first visit. If you are reading this after receiving treatment and the medical reports are already vague, you address this in your testimony.

Simple bending. Another common defense workers often don’t see coming. The insurer concedes you were hurt at a specific time, but that nothing about the job caused it – like the shoe-tying case I described above. You potentially overcome this by including all details surrounding the incident. This is a situation where more is better, which isn’t always true in litigation.

You broke a lifting rule. Virginia lets employers and insurers escape liability for lifting injuries if they prove that your willful violation of a known, enforced safety rule caused the accident. This is the most common willful misconduct defense I see employers raise during discovery, then drop before trial. There are two reasons for this. First, many employers have policies requiring the use of a hoist or tandem lifting for items or people weighing above a certain weight but do not enforce them. Doing so would disrupt their business. Second, even the most detailed and enforced ergonomic lifting rules fail when transferring patients or moving items that behave unpredictably. I’m not saying you should ignore this defense, but there are generally ways to defeat it.

Pre-existing condition. This defense addresses the nature and extent of disability from your lifting injury, not compensability itself. If you have a history of back pain, a prior MRI, or even surgery, the employer may concede you had a compensable lifting or bending injury but argue it was only a temporary exacerbation that has healed. It may even refer you for an IME. But remember: the employer takes you as you are, and you need only prove the lifting injury worsened any pre-existing condition by one iota.

Lifting claims by job

What the lifting injury turns out to be

Many lifting injuries I see are strains that resolve in weeks or a few months. The ones that don’t heal often turn out to be a disc problem. If your lumbar MRI shows a herniation, bulge, or annular tear, the value and the insurer’s next move are on my herniated and bulging discs page. For an overview of back injuries at work and what they pay, start with back injuries at work. If the injury leaves lasting weakness or numbness in a leg, the permanency question is on my back injury impairment rating.

Common questions about lifting injuries

I didn’t feel a pop. Does that matter? No. A pop helps the story and allows you to pinpoint the specific incident with ease, but the law asks for a sudden change in your body, not a sound. Sharp pain at a moment you can describe is enough. So is a lift that you describe as difficult that leads to pain a few days later. Pain does not have to start immediately. However, the smaller the gap between the incident and the start of your symptoms, the better for proving your claim.

I was able to finish my shift and couldn’t get out of bed the next morning. That is a common pattern I see over and over. The insurance adjuster may try to make that seem like a big deal, but it’s usually not as long as you can describe the lift, twist, or bend the day before.

My back has been sore for months from this job. This complaint arises frequently, especially in cases involving lifting injuries at warehouses or with delivery drivers, whose jobs require lots of lifts. Winning these kinds of cases is more challenging, but not impossible. You can still win if you can identify a specific incident that made the condition worse.

Is a lifting injury worth less than an accident like a fall? No. The value depends on the injury and the wage, not the mechanism. A lift that herniates a disc is worth what the disc is worth.

Helping Workers with Lifting Injuries

Facts matter when it comes to work-related lifting, twisting, and bending injuries. A detail that seems trivial often decides the case.

Rather than researching the case law on your own while trying to heal, call my firm to see how we can help: 804-251-1620. You pay nothing unless we successfully resolve your case.