It was almost ten at night, on a soccer field. A police officer serving in an operational unit of the Israel Police, a combat role that demands a high level of physical fitness, was playing with friends. Another player crashed into him at full force. He was thrown to the ground and landed on his shoulder.
This was no ordinary pickup game. Those hours were logged in the police attendance system as “fitness training hours”, paid working hours, under official directives of the police human resources division. The directives allow officers in operational units to train on work time, anywhere and at any hour of the day. The officer was doing exactly what his organization had asked him to do.
Israel’s National Insurance Institute saw it differently.
The day after the injury he was already sitting in front of an orthopedist. The medical record stated: fell during a soccer game, in the course of work. Subsequent tests revealed a ligament injury in the joint connecting the collarbone to the shoulder blade. He was sent home with a sling, painkillers and physical therapy. Long months later, when the pain would not subside, an MRI revealed an avulsion fracture and traumatic changes in the joint.
The police itself had no doubts either. His direct commander confirmed the circumstances and recommended recognizing the injury as one sustained on duty. The welfare officer approved. The casualties division ruled: on duty.
Then came the rejection letter. The National Insurance Institute determined that this was a “private activity during night hours”, unrelated to work.
At that point the case came to our office, and Adv. Chaim Marcus filed a claim on the officer’s behalf with the Regional Labor Court.
This is where Adv. Chaim Marcus’s experience at the National Labor Court comes into play. A close, inside familiarity with how Israel’s highest labor-law instance works — the questions it asks, the precedents that guide it, and the weight it gives to questions of principle — makes it possible to build a claim in the language the court understands and to focus it precisely on the decisive points. In cases like this one, where the outcome rests on the legal framework no less than on the facts, that is a real advantage.
The statement of claim did not settle for a general assertion that the decision was wrong. It was built layer upon layer: the human resources directives under which the training took place; the attendance report for that very evening, showing reported and approved fitness training hours precisely overlapping the time of the injury; the approvals of the commander and the casualties division; and the complete medical record, from the examination the next morning to the MRI findings. On top of that foundation came the legal framework: Israeli case law has long held that sports activity can be recognized as “activity ancillary to work” where the employer has a real interest in it, and it is hard to imagine a clearer interest than that of a police force in the physical fitness of its combat officers.
Faced with such a record, the National Insurance Institute had little left to say. Shortly before the scheduled evidentiary hearing, without a single witness being heard, the Institute reversed its position: the claim was accepted, and the shoulder injury was recognized as a work injury. The court gave the notice the force of a judgment, and the hearing was canceled.
The recognition opens the way for the officer to receive injury benefits for his periods of incapacity, and later to file for a work disability rating.
This case ended without a single cross-examination and without a single evidentiary hearing. Sometimes the best legal work is the kind that makes the trial itself unnecessary: a statement of claim that lays out the evidence so thoroughly, the other side is left with nothing to fight over.