The Superior Court of Justice of Río Negro (STJ) rejected the appeal of a Work Risk Insurance Company (ART) and confirmed a ruling that forces the ART to pay increased compensation to the family of a fuel dispatcher from Sierra Grande, who died from Covid-19 during the pandemic.
The man worked at a service station for almost 30 years. During the preventive and mandatory isolation, he continued to carry out his duties as usual because he was an excepted personnel. Upon receiving a positive COVID diagnosis, he was ordered to isolate himself with his family.
Subsequently, He was referred to the Sierra Grande hospital due to low oxygen saturation. He was diagnosed with bilateral pneumonia and was transferred to the Zatti hospital in Viedma, where he finally died.
The compensation would have a higher interest rate than usual
In the administrative process, the professional nature of the disease was recognized. In the initial ruling of the Labor Chamber, now confirmed by the STJ, a higher interest rate than the usual expected rate was added to the compensation “for cases of delay in providing the corresponding compensation”.
This last point occurred when the Chamber «verified that the ART continued with a reticent attitude towards fulfilling its obligations throughout the course of the process, pretaining to discuss issues that were firm and agreed upon at this stage, delaying the payment of compensation due to the actors and causing, due to the enormous inflationary process that the country is going through, a damage that cannot be validated,” says the STJ ruling.
In its appeal to the highest court, the ART argued that it did not try to delay the process, so a higher interest rate was not appropriate. He said it was «how much less reasonable is it to dispute in court the condition of work-related misfortune of the disease due to Covid-19″.
In this way, “it cannot be considered cAs a mechanism to delay obligations borne by the ART, since otherwise it would imply censuring their right to defense in court,” he stated.
The STJ denied the complaint, and the sentence was confirmed
The highest Rio Negro court denied the complaint: the claim “does nothing more than present grievances similar to those developed at the time of filing the main appeal, without attacking in a concrete and forceful way the reasons for the refusal of the extraordinary appeal.
In practice “it is limited to reiterate the proposals already put forward and express their disagreement with the resolution of the Chamber, but it does not demonstrate, in a direct and effective way, the error of the denial.
This way, The sentence was confirmed and the ART must compensate the heirs of the man.
