THE family of a woman who died at a ­work Christmas party has lost ­its bid for a payout from one ­of the nation’s largest employers.

Jukes Campbell, of Noosa, worked for retail giant Woolworths as a fine wine manager at liquor chain Dan Murphy’s when she dived into shallow water during a picnic on Good Friday last year.

The Christmas party was held in March because staff were too busy to hold it earlier and Good Friday was the only other day the store closed its doors.

Just minutes before she dived into the Noosa River, she asked store manager Michael Smith to take photos of her and a colleague.

The mother-of-two suffered head and neck injuries and died in hospital two days later.

Ms Campbell’s husband, Jonathon, a police officer from Mackay, originally won the right to her workers compensation after the deputy director-general for Fair and Safe Work Queensland approved his claim.

But Woolworths’ workers compensation insurance arm decided to block the payout by appealing to the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission and the decision was overturned.

In order to qualify for a workers compensation payout staff must prove their injury “arose out of, or in the course of” their work.

Woolworths conceded its staff, including the store manager, encouraged Ms Campbell to attend the party but denied they encouraged her to dive into the Noosa River.

In his decision, IRC deputy president Daniel O’Connor ruled that Mr Campbell was not entitled to his wife’s workers compensation because she had been “on a frolic of her own”.

Mr Campbell has lodged an appeal. The maximum amount payable in Queensland is $374,625.

Woolworths employs more than 197,000 people nationwide and has nearly 900 retail liquor outlets and 627 petrol stations.

In a similar case in NSW, Woolworths refused to pay workers compensation to the three orphaned children of single mother Marie Scanlan, the manager of a petrol station in western Sydney.

Ms Scanlan had a heart attack at the wheel of her car as she drove to a stressful management meeting in April 2009.

The Workers Compensation Commission ruled Woolworths must pay $433,650 to Ms Scanlan’s children because her stressful job, where she worked up to 70 hours a week, aggravated her deadly heart condition.

The WCC rejected Woolworths’ claim that she was to blame for her death because of her “lifestyle”.

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