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Should a construction worker who was severely injured while trying to rescue another man at a job site be denied workers compensation?



The state Supreme Court will consider that question.



It agreed to take on that case this week after Pipeline Systems Inc. appealed a Commonwealth Court ruling that backed workers comp for the injured rescuer, Franklin Pound.

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2015/07/worker_injured_during_rescue_b.html



Pipeline Systems argues that Pound, its employee, should be denied those benefits because he wasn't really at work when he tried to save a man who fell into a concrete pit at Sewickley Borough's sewage treatment plant in July 2010.



The victim, an employee of the plant, died and Pound was overcome by methane gas as he climbed out of the pit. He passed out was injured when he fell 20 feet from a ladder.



Pipeline Systems and the Continental Western Insurance Co. claim Pound isn't eligible for workers comp because the rescue wasn't part of his work-related duties. Pound was at the sewage plant because his firm had a contract to enlarge the facility.



In a ruling issued in July, a Commonwealth Court panel concluded that the rescue bid was within the scope of Pound's employment.



The Supreme Court will delve into one question: whether state law "unambiguously provides that the employee must be within the course and scope of his employment at the time he provides aid and is injured, not merely be in the course and scope of his employment at the time the emergency arose."