Former colleague and renowned pet blogger Helena Sung caught this item about a worker at an adventure park in Montana who was mauled when he entered a grizzly bear‘s pen to feed it. When he applied for workers’ comp benefits, the employer challenged it based on the worker having smoked marijuana earlier. Wrote the judge,
“Hopkins’ use of marijuana to kick off a day of working around grizzly bears was ill-advised to say the least and mind-bogglingly stupid to say the most. However, I have been presented with no evidence by which I can conclude that Hopkins’ marijuana use was the major contributing cause of the grizzly attack.”
The employer didn’t come off as a saint in the judge’s opinion either. The judge was not impressed with the employer’s argument that Hopkins was not an employee, but a volunteer. To explain the fact that he paid Hopkins, the employer claimed that the money he gave him on multiple occasions was an act of charity. Personally, I’d have a hard time making that argument with a straight face.