Court: "If a worker dies from a blood clot while being treated for a work injury, it is an occupational accident"

Fell while Installing Scaffolding... Died of Pulmonary Embolism a Month Later

A court has ruled that the death of a worker who was receiving medical treatment for an on-the-job injury should be considered an occupational accident if it was caused by a blood clot resulting from limited mobility.

Seoul Administrative Court in Seocho-gu, Seoul. Yonhap News.

According to legal sources on October 11, the Seoul Administrative Court's Administrative Division 7, presided over by Judge Kang Woochan, recently ruled in favor of the plaintiff in a lawsuit filed by the parents of construction worker A against the Korea Workers' Compensation and Welfare Service, seeking to overturn its decision to deny survivors' benefits and funeral expenses.

In 2024, A fell from a work platform 2 meters high while installing scaffolding at a construction site. He was diagnosed with a fracture of his right ankle and facial lacerations and received inpatient treatment. The Service then approved his claim for an occupational injury, and he received medical treatment. About a month after the accident, he was found collapsed in the bathroom of his home and taken to a hospital, where he died.

An autopsy by the National Forensic Service found a blood clot in a deep vein in his leg and pulmonary emboli in branches of both pulmonary arteries. The Service determined that the cause of death was pulmonary embolism.

A's parents claimed that his death was work-related and applied for survivors' benefits and funeral expenses. In March 2025, the Service denied the claim, saying no causal link had been established between his death and the occupational accident. It cited an opinion from its medical advisory committee that the pulmonary embolism may have been caused by an arrhythmia, noting that A had been diagnosed with arrhythmia about five months before the accident. After their request for a review was dismissed, his parents filed a lawsuit.

The issue was whether there was a substantial causal relationship between A's death and the injuries he sustained in the fall.

The court found the Service's decision unlawful. It cited the court-appointed expert's conclusion that the fracture and trauma had limited A's mobility and damaged the walls of his blood vessels, leading to deep vein thrombosis, and that the clot most likely developed into a pulmonary embolism that caused his death.

The court also said that the fact that A died a month after the accident did not break the causal link. It accepted the expert's explanation that a pulmonary embolism can cause sudden death without warning symptoms if a large embolus forms, and that the condition may go undiagnosed during a person's lifetime if all the clots break away. The court said it was difficult to rule out a causal relationship "solely on the grounds that he died of a pulmonary embolism about one month later."

The court noted that deep vein thrombosis can have few or no symptoms, and that it would be difficult to notice new symptoms in someone like A, who was already experiencing pain and swelling from an ankle fracture. While there was no evidence that thrombosis had developed during his hospitalization, the court said it could not rule out the possibility that a clot formed after his discharge while his mobility remained limited.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.