COLUMBUS Ohio The Ohio Supreme Court reversed itself Thursday and ruled on a 5-2 vote that David Gross, a then-16-year-old KFC worker who was fired by a franchisee in 2003 for violating safety rules after he badly burned himself, should get temporary disability benefits.
According to a report by the Associated Press, Gross was injured after trying to clean a pressure cooker by boiling water in it at a KFC unit in the Dayton, Ohio, area.
State claims authorities had agreed with Cincinnati-based KFC franchisee Food Folks & Fun Inc. that Gross voluntarily forfeited his job by disobeying safety rules, and the high court concurred last December, though critics said the court broke with the traditional "no-fault" doctrine for compensating workers injured on the job.
In its ruling Thursday, the court said that "although KFC appears justified in firing Gross for violating workplace rules, the termination letter established that his discharge was related to his industrial injury," in effect making the job loss involuntary.