Jumping out of a window in home office due to an exploding e-scooter battery is not an insured accident at work
Update Employment Law November 2025
LSG Berlin-Brandenburg, judgment of October 9, 2025 - L 21 U 47/23
While a Berlin-based software developer was holding a conference call in his apartment on the first floor of an apartment building, which he used as his home office, he noticed heavy smoke spreading from the hallway into the living room. When he opened the door to the hallway to investigate the cause of the smoke, two batteries in his e-scooter exploded, causing a jet of flame and considerable smoke. As the exploding batteries blocked his escape route out of the apartment door, he saved himself by jumping out of the window into the courtyard, breaking both feet in the process. The fire department's investigation revealed that the jet of flame was caused by a defect in the e-scooter's batteries.
In its judgement of October 9, 2025, the Berlin-Brandenburg Regional Social Court had to deal with the question of whether this was an accident at work subject to statutory accident insurance.
The plaintiff, a software developer, took this view and sought recognition of the incident as an accident at work, while the responsible employers' liability insurance association refused to recognize the incident as an accident at work. The software developer's subsequent lawsuit was unsuccessful in the first instance in front of the Social Court. He appealed against the judgment dismissing the action to the Berlin-Brandenburg Regional Social Court.
The Berlin-Brandenburg Regional Social Court upheld the first-instance decision. It agreed with the professional association and denied that an accident at work had occurred. Accordingly, the software developer was not covered by statutory accident insurance pursuant to Section 8 (1) SGB VII. This was because there was no "sufficiently close factual relationship," i.e., no sufficient factual connection, between the jump out of the window and the plaintiff's professional activity in the form of the conference call he was conducting. By jumping out of the window, the plaintiff was primarily seeking to save his life and thus pursuing an "overriding private motive." The court attached only secondary importance to the fact that jumping out of the window also served to preserve his ability to work.
According to the case law of the Federal Social Court, accidents in the home office can in principle be classified as accidents at work (see Federal Social Court, judgment of March 21, 2024 - B 2 U 14/21 R). This is because even hazards posed by private objects can be covered by accident insurance if they are used for work. In May 2025, for example, the Saxony-Anhalt Regional Labour Court classified a fall caused by choking while drinking coffee in the home office as an insured accident at work (see Saxony-Anhalt Regional Labour Court, judgement of May 22, 2025 - L 6 U 45/23).
In the underlying case, however, the e-scooter and its batteries were not being used for professional purposes and were therefore not "business-related" at the time of the accident in the plaintiff's apartment. Neither the e-scooter nor its batteries were used for the conference call that the plaintiff was engaged in at the time of the explosion. It was irrelevant that the plaintiff also used his e-scooter to travel to work on office days.
The judgement is in line with previous social court case law, according to which an accident at work only exists if there is a factual connection between the accident and the performance of a work-related activity. The judgement is not yet final, and the full text is not yet available. Due to the practical nature of the case, the publication of the full reasons for the decision is eagerly awaited.
