산업재해 판례의 동향과 전망 – 산재보험의 법적 성격과 상당인과관계의 증명책임을 중심으로 –

In this article, I looked at the trends in industrial accident precedents and the direction in which precedent jurisprudence should move, focusing on the legal nature of industrial accident insurance and the burden of proof regarding the causal relationship between work and accidents. The key contents are as follows. First, the case law considers that industrial accident insurance has both liability insurance and social insurance characteristics with respect to the scope of third parties who are subject to the exercise of compensation rights, but the liability of industrial accident insurance is determined by the standard of direct or indirect industrial accident insurance relationship with the injured worker. The interpretation is more focused on the insurance nature. However, industrial accidents are not caused by the negligence of someone working there, but are a result of the risks posed by the workplace. The method of holding someone responsible for an accident depending on the type of contract of the person working at the workplace goes against the social insurance nature of industrial accident insurance. Second, the court recognizes the fact that there is a high incidence of rare diseases in workplaces in the high-tech industry, the employer's refusal to cooperate, or the relevant administrative agency's refusal or delay in the investigation, which are indirect facts favorable to the worker at the stage of recognizing a significant causal relationship between work and the accident. The burden of proof of causal relationship was alleviated by saying that it could be considered. However, it is difficult to say that this alone substantially alleviates the difficulty of proving causality on the part of the injured worker. Shifting the burden of proof regarding causal relationships is a way to resolve these difficulties in proof, but it is difficult to recognize as an interpretation theory and is a matter that requires legislation. In terms of interpretation, in the case of occupational diseases, the expression proof theory should be used to consider that if an injured worker with no significant health problems handled hazardous chemicals for a considerable period of time and the disease occurred thereafter, a causal relationship is in fact assumed. Furthermore, the employer's refusal to disclose information on hazardous substances, etc. must be actively recognized as an obstruction to proof, giving it the legal effect of virtually presuming a causal relationship.