A seafarer won his petition filed before the Supreme Court to compel his former employers to pay him disability benefits amounting to US$90,000 after getting injured in a basketball game.

In a decision promulgated on July 10, 2023, the Supreme Court 3rd Division ordered Wilhelmsen Smith Bell Manning, Inc., Wilhelmsen Ship Management Ltd. and corporate officers of Smith Bell Manning, Inc. to pay seafarer Rosell Arguilles total and permanent disability benefits due him, with 6% per annum interest.

In 2016, Arguilles suffered an injury in his left ankle while he was playing basketball with his work colleagues during their free time.

Arguilles was medically repatriated in 2017 and underwent surgery to repair his “severely attenuated Achilles tendon consistent with high-grade partial tear.”

He also underwent 49 physical therapy sessions but was still declared by an independent physician as unfit for duty.

Arguilles filed a complaint before the National Labor Relations Commission when his request for disability benefits from the respondents went unheeded.

The NLRC decided in favor of Arguilles, only to be reversed after the respondents filed a motion for reconsideration, on the ground that the injury was not work-related.

Arguilles then went to the Court of Appeals which also pronounced that the injury was not work-related and not compensable.

The Supreme Court however noted that Arguilles was playing basketball, which is an employer-sanctioned activity onboard the vessel and cannot be considered as a reckless or deliberate activity unmindful of one’s safety.

“The records are bereft of any evidence, much less the slightest indication, that the injury suffered by petitioner was intentionally or negligently incurred. Thus, his injury is worthy of compensation,” the Supreme Court said in the decision penned by Associate Justice Samuel Gaerlan, with the concurrence of Associate Justices Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa, Henri Jean Paul Inting, Japar Dimaampao and Maria Filomena Singh.

The court cited the Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act of 1995 as the basis to declare Wilhelmsen Manning jointly and severally liable for the total judgment award.

The court also noted that the NLRC correctly declared that Arguilles is entitled to full disability benefits in accordance with the Norwegian Shipowners’ Association and the Association of Marine Officers’ and Seamen’s Union of the Philippines and the Norwegian Seafarers’ Union Collective Bargaining Agreement or NSA-AMOSUP/NSU CBA.

The court however made it clear that not all injuries sustained by a seafarer shall be compensable.

“After all, the employer was never intended to be an insurer against all accidental injuries which might happen to an employee while in the course of the employment, but only for such injuries arising from or growing out of the risks peculiar to the nature of work in the scope of the workmen’s employment or incidental to such employment, and accidents in which it is possible to trace the injury to some risk or hazard to which the employee is exposed in a special degree by reason of such employment,” the Supreme Court said.