5 Bizarre Workers' Comp Claims That Were Actually Successful

5

A Woman Breaks a Lamp With Her Face Mid-Coitus

In 2007, an Australian woman filed for workers' compensation benefits after being hit in the face by a lamp that she ripped from the wall while having violent sex in a hotel room on a business trip (this is the only kind of sex that is ever had in hotel rooms).

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"You see lamps, I see potential butt plugs."

4

A Man Breaks His Hip on a Vending Machine

Circuit City employee Clinton Dwyer filed a workers' comp claim after fracturing his hip while trying to shake loose a bag of chips from the break room vending machine, because apparently the vending machine was the Last Son of Krypton and Dwyer was 90 years old.

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"We meet again, my old foe."

3

A Woman Trips Over Her Dog at Home

Mary Sandberg was walking to her garage when she tripped over her goddamn dog and broke her wrist. However, Sandberg worked as a decorator for J.C. Penney, and since she was going out to the garage to retrieve some fabric samples she'd temporarily stored there, this technically made her home a "work environment," and she was awarded compensation for the injury, confirming our long-held suspicion that all of J.C. Penney's clothes are stitched together in a suburban garage covered in dog shit.

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Above: J.C. Penney's corporate headquarters.

2

A Woman Accidentally Drinks Lye

Laura McRae was in the break room at Arby's when she mistakenly drank from the wrong cup. This normally results in an unpleasant swig of grape soda when you were expecting a refreshing splash of lukewarm whiskey, but for reasons that can never possibly be explained the cup contained lye, a substance that is also known as liquid superdeath.

"But it says soda right on the bottle."

McRae "suffered third-degree burns to her esophagus," although we imagine it must have taken emergency responders several minutes to discover the source, seeing as how every item on the Arby's menu will cause the human body to dissolve itself from the inside out.

1

A Man Feeds Bears While High

Brock Hopkins worked as a bear feeder at Great Bear Adventures, which is the single greatest sentence that has ever been written. One morning, he decided to smoke all of the weed in his sock drawer before showing up for his job (which, as we may have mentioned, was to feed bears). Predictable hijinks ensued, ultimately resulting in a bear biting half of Hopkins' ass off before he was able to scramble to safety.

"Oh God, how could this have backfired?"

Despite the fact that the written decision of the court referred to Hopkins' choice to mix weed and grizzly bears as "mind-bogglingly stupid," he was awarded $65,000 to cover his medical expenses (and several pounds of salmon-scented weed).

Mike Floorwalker has a blog, a Twitter, and several other things that sound made-up to old people.