He limped through a 'suck it up' shift. His employer's response went to a tribunal
A scaffolding company spent more than a year fighting one of its labourers over a knee injury, arguing there was no real accident, that he reported it too late and that he was hurt off the job. British Columbia's workers' compensation appeal tribunal rejected the bid and upheld the worker's claim.
The decision came down on May 29, 2026, when Vice Chair Courtney LeBourdais of the Workers' Compensation Appeal Tribunal denied the employer's appeal. The worker, a 48-year-old labourer who had worked on an as-needed basis for the scaffolding firm since 2013, said he injured his right knee while building scaffolding on a ship. LeBourdais confirmed the injury arose out of and in the course of his employment and ruled the worker was entitled to wage-loss benefits, leaving the amount to the board.
A gradual injury, not a single accident
The worker's shift on January 27, 2025, was physically demanding. By the tribunal's accepted account, he walked a 100-metre ramp set at a 30-degree incline while carrying gear weighing between 20 and 60 pounds, climbed stairs and a catwalk, and knelt on steel for two to three hours. About halfway through the day his right knee began to ache, and the pain worsened over the days that followed.
The employer argued that none of this counted because there was no single dramatic incident. It submitted that the worker's routine duties were natural body motions, and that ordinary movement at work does not, on its own, prove a workplace injury.
LeBourdais accepted there was no traumatic accident but found that did not bar the claim. Workers' compensation policy treats an injury that builds across a series of tasks as compensable when the work is more than a trivial cause, and the tribunal found the scaffolding duties cleared that bar.
Working through the pain
The worker also described why he kept working. According to his statement, he pushed through a visibly painful knee because of the expectations on the job.
He put it plainly: "My supervisors could see that I was injured on the 27th. I was visibly limping, but I work in a culture of suck it up and tough it out. So I continued to do so in order [to] not to let the team down."
The reporting timeline was also disputed. The worker texted a supervisor on January 29 to say he had hurt his knee at work and needed a doctor, and the supervisor later confirmed that message to the board. The tribunal found the employer's representatives knew of the injury by then, and noted the employer offered no statements from the supervisors to contradict the worker.
Why the appeal failed
On the medical front, the employer claimed the knee problem was pre-existing, possibly tied to the worker's earlier self-employment as a carpenter, which had ended in October 2024. The tribunal found no support for those theories in the medical record and declined to treat the diagnosis as a pre-existing condition.
Causation turned on expert opinion that the work was at least as likely as not a cause. A Review Division medical advisor who reviewed the job demands concluded the activity could injure the knee.
The advisor wrote: "The activities described above involved repetitive flexion and extension of the knee, with moderate to heavy force. Walking up and down ramps also engaged the quadriceps muscle to an above-average extent. It is biologically plausibl[e] that the reported activities would have contributed to the diagnosed condition." The tribunal also ruled the worker was owed wage-loss benefits from January 29, since the employer made no light-duty offer until January 31.
