An employee who was working on a shift felt dizzy, then was determined to have a stroke or cerebral infarction. The incident occurred during working hours, at the workplace and when the employee was performing the assigned task. Is this an occupational accident?
A labor case tried by the People's Court of Phu My town, Ba Ria – Vung Tau province (formerly) shows that the answer is not simple. The line between a health event that occurred during work and an "occupational accident" in the legal sense can be very fragile.
According to the judgment, the employee is an operation technician of an electricity enterprise, working under an indefinite-term labor contract.
In the same case, the enterprise believes that the employee suffered a stroke due to a pathology; the employee thinks that this is an occupational accident; the medical facility confirms the injury but does not conclude whether it is an occupational accident; and the Court determines that it is an occupational accident case. This difference raises the core question: how must a health event occur during the work be related to the work to be determined as an occupational accident?
A stroke during a shift
According to the judgment, the employee is an operation technician of an electricity enterprise, working under an indefinite-term labor contract.
At about 14 o'clock on June 3, 2021, the worker and his colleagues were assigned to open the bottom drain valve of the heat recovery furnace. After completing the work, he felt dizzy. At the medical room, he appeared unable to use his right hand flexibly and was later diagnosed with stroke, cerebral infarction, and hypertension[1].
The enterprise makes a record of occupational accident investigation and recommends the employee for medical examination. After 12 months of treatment, considering that the employee's health has not recovered to meet the job of an operation technician, the enterprise decides to unilaterally terminate the labor contract.
The dispute therefore does not only revolve around the right to terminate the contract. A decisive issue is whether the stroke is an occupational accident or just a pathology that arises at the right time of work. The two parties therefore offer two different views on the same health event[2].
Is "Happening While Working" enough?
The difficulty of the case lies in the criteria for determining occupational accidents.
According to the Law on Occupational Safety and Health 2015, an occupational accident is an accident that causes injury to any part or function of the body or causes death to the employee, occurs during the working process, associated with the performance of work or labor tasks[3].
From this definition, it is possible to separate the problem into two questions. First, did the event occur during the employee's work? Second, and more difficult, is the injury "associated with the performance of work and labor tasks"?
With accidents with obvious external factors, this connection is often easy to recognize: workers are injured by the machine while operating, fall while inspecting the construction or get burned while operating the equipment. But stroke, heart attack and endogenous health events pose a different problem.
A person can suffer a stroke while working but can also experience the same event while resting. If it is enough for the incident to occur during working hours, the scope of an occupational accident may be understood too broadly. Conversely, if a stroke is considered a personal illness and the worker is required to prove that the work directly caused the incident, their rights may be very difficult to protect.
Medical diagnosis is not a legal conclusion
According to the judgment, a representative of Ba Ria Hospital said that the hospital had issued an injury certificate to the employee but did not determine whether this was an occupational accident or not. The record also shows that there are assessment activities related to bodily injury.
This detail shows an important point: the medical diagnosis and the legal conclusion are not the same. The doctor can determine the worker who had a stroke, the extent of the injury and the sequelae. But whether the incident constitutes an occupational accident or not must be considered from the circumstances of the incident, the tasks being performed, the investigation records and relevant evidence.
In other words, the diagnosis of a stroke is a medical question; determining whether the stroke is an occupational accident is a legal question that is addressed on a broader set of evidence.
How did the Court view the case?
In the case, the Court pays attention to the fact that the employee was performing the assigned duties when the incident occurred and the documents cited in the record.
In the process of argument, the Court also invoked Appendix II of Decree 39/2016/ND-CP on the list of injuries to determine serious occupational [4]accidents.
On that basis, the Trial Panel concluded that there were sufficient grounds to determine that the employee suffered a stroke while on duty in the case of occupational accident.
The legal consequences are not small: the decision to unilaterally terminate the contract is canceled; the enterprise is forced to accept employees back to work, compensate salaries and two months' salary with a total amount of more than 725 million VND, and at the same time perform related insurance obligations.
However, this solution shows that the legal question is still worth discussing.
From "occurring at work" to "associated with work"
There is not much debate about whether workers develop symptoms during a shift. What is more difficult is whether that fact is sufficient to establish a link between the injury and the performance of the job.
It is necessary to distinguish the coincidence of time from the legal relationship between work and injury. On the other hand, it should not be taken for granted that work must be the sole medical cause of injury, because the language of the law is "associated with the performance of work and labor tasks", not simply "caused by work".
The gap between these two interpretations is the most difficult area for cases with endogenous pathological factors. In each case, the nature of the job, the working conditions, the activities the worker has just performed, the time of the onset of symptoms, the health records, and professional facts may need to be considered as a whole. No single factor should be taken for granted as the answer to the whole problem.
Therefore, the question to be asked is not only whether the event occurred during working hours or not, but what evidence is sufficient to show that the event is associated with the performance of the work.
The case shows the value of the records made immediately after the incident occurred.
The same case, different perspectives
According to the dossier, the People's Procuracy of Phu My town said that the Trial Panel's determination of the employee in the case of an occupational accident, thereby canceling the decision to terminate the contract and forcing the enterprise to accept the employee back to work, was not in accordance with the provisions of law and documents and evidence; at the same time, it proposed to consider the appeal.
This is the prosecutorial view of the first-instance judgment. This difference shows that the same set of facts can still lead to different legal judgments.
Therefore, the more important question is not "is a stroke an occupational accident?", but rather: in each specific case, what evidence is needed and how the degree of work-related connection must be established for a health event to be recognized as an occupational accident?
What do businesses need to do?
The case shows the value of the records made immediately after the incident occurred.
When employees encounter serious health events at work, the first priority must be emergency and health protection. At the same time, businesses need to promptly and objectively record the circumstances of the incident and properly implement the applicable process.
What are the workers' duties? Who assigns work? When do symptoms appear? What are the abnormal working conditions? Who witnesses? What do the cameras, shift logs, equipment data, and initial medical records show? These can be decisive facts when a dispute arises.
In particular, businesses should not rush to "name" the incident when the nature of the incident is unclear.
In this case itself, the occupational accident investigation record made by the enterprise has become one of the documents used to argue the nature of the incident.
Therefore, businesses need to avoid both extremes: rushing to deny occupational accidents to eliminate liability, or rushing to conclusions when the verification is not complete. It is also necessary to be cautious before moving from handling incidents to terminating labor relations, because an incomplete assessment of the nature of the event can entail risks in terms of wages, insurance, compensation and the obligation to accept employees back to work.
The case shows that the biggest difficulty in determining an occupational accident does not lie in where or when the incident occurred, but in the relationship between injury and work. With health events such as strokes, that boundary is even more difficult to determine. Therefore, businesses should not rush to find a conclusion in their favor, but need to preserve the truth so that a correct conclusion can be made. Because an event may only take place for a few minutes, but the way it is recorded and handled in the first place can determine the legal consequences many years later.
[1] https://laodongdoanthe.vn/xet-xu-phuc-tham-vu-nguoi-lao-dong-thang-kien-duoc-boi-thuong-hon-725-trieu-dong-104455.html, accessed on 27/09/2026.
[2] Results of the case:
At the appellate court hearing on May 9, 2025, the trial panel of the People's Court of Ba Ria Vung Tau province organized a mediation for the two parties to reach an agreement and jointly resolve the case. Accordingly, the representative of BOT PM3 Company agreed to compensate Mr. Luu Chi Hieu with an additional amount of VND 550 million. At the same time, it is responsible for making a complete dossier and sending it to the competent social insurance agency so that Mr. Hieu is entitled to occupational accident insurance regimes as prescribed. On the basis of the agreement of the two parties, the trial panel recognized the successful mediation results at this appellate court hearing . Thus, the amount of compensation that BOT PM3 Company must compensate Mr. Luu Chi Hieu for a total of nearly VND 1.8 billion due to occupational accidents at the workplace.
[3] Clause 8, Article 3 of the Law on Occupational Safety and Health 2015.
[4] Appendix II, List of injuries for determination of serious occupational accidents.
