Juan Sáez de Argandoña
LABOUR AND SOCIAL SECURITY DIVISION
Supreme Court Judgment (Plenary) No. 444/2026, of 23 April (Appeal No. 2505/2024), is arguably the most significant decision handed down to date by the Spanish Supreme Court in relation to remote working and occupational accidents. The importance of the judgment lies not only in its classification of the death of an employee working from home as a workplace accident, but also in the fact that it establishes authoritative case law on matters of considerable practical importance for employers. These include the application of the presumption that an accident is work-related in remote working scenarios, the scope of working time recording obligations in flexible working environments, and the allocation of the burden of proof when an accident occurs during remote working.
The case concerned an employee of Accenture who worked remotely from home several days a week and died at her residence as a result of an acute myocardial infarction. The legal dispute arose because she worked under a flexible working hours arrangement, leading the employer’s insurance mutual (Mutua) to argue that it had not been established that the cardiac event had occurred during actual working time.
Rejecting that interpretation, the Supreme Court begins from a fundamental premise: remote working is not exempt from the legal framework governing occupational accidents. On the contrary, the Court recalls that no statutory provision excludes the application of Article 156.3 of the General Social Security Act (Ley General de la Seguridad Social – LGSS) to employees working remotely and expressly states that the presumption that an accident is work-related remains fully applicable in this form of employment. The judgment notes that this presumption has a clear “general scope” and applies equally where professional activities are carried out from the employee’s home.
The decision is particularly significant because it resolves one of the principal legal uncertainties arising from the expansion of remote working: the identification of the workplace. The Supreme Court holds that, where services are provided from home pursuant to a remote working agreement, the employee’s home fully constitutes the workplace for the purposes of Article 156.3 LGSS. Consequently, the focus of the analysis should no longer be the location where the accident occurred, but rather whether it took place during working time.
It is precisely on this point that the judgment makes its most significant contribution. The Court rejects the notion that flexible working hours may operate to the detriment of employees. In other words, the fact that an employee enjoys a degree of autonomy in organising their working day does not eliminate the employer’s monitoring obligations, nor does it automatically shift onto the employee the burden of proving that they were working at the time of the accident.
The judgment also introduces a particularly important distinction for future remote working cases by differentiating between activities carried out online and those performed offline for the purposes of determining the burden of proof. Where work is carried out using IT systems or technological tools that enable the employee’s activity to be monitored, it is for the employer to produce the relevant records and monitoring systems available to establish whether the employee was providing services at the time of the accident. Conversely, where activities are performed offline, without objective systems capable of tracing or monitoring the employee’s work, the burden of proving the connection between the accident and the employment rests with the party asserting that the incident constitutes an occupational contingency. This clarification reinforces the importance of working time recording systems and activity monitoring mechanisms in remote working arrangements and provides valuable guidance for determining whether accidents occurring in remote working environments qualify as occupational accidents.
The Court further emphasises that employers remain under an obligation to comply with the requirements laid down in Article 34.9 of the Workers’ Statute and Article 14 of Law 10/2021 on Remote Working, meaning they must implement mechanisms capable of accurately recording employees’ working time. In this regard, the Supreme Court reiterates that working time recording systems must faithfully reflect the time devoted to work, including the start and end of the working day as well as any rest periods.
The Court considered it particularly significant that the employer failed to produce the employee’s detailed working time records or the information generated by the activity monitoring tools provided for in the remote working agreement itself. The judgment also highlights that there was no documentary evidence showing that the employee had begun her lunch break or had finished work before suffering the fatal cardiac event.
From both a preventive and organisational perspective, this finding is of considerable importance, as the Supreme Court effectively establishes that the absence of reliable and comprehensive records may prevent an employer from rebutting the presumption that an accident is work-related. The organisational flexibility inherent in remote working does not remove the need to properly document working hours; rather, it reinforces the importance of having systems capable of accurately demonstrating when work is being performed and when an employee is taking a break or rest period.
Another particularly noteworthy aspect of the judgment is the Court’s assessment of the factual evidence in the specific case. The Court attached significance to the autopsy findings showing that the employee’s stomach was empty, considering this consistent with the conclusion that she had not yet begun her lunch break. Likewise, the Court emphasised that there was no objective evidence indicating that she had ceased working before her death.
On the basis of these factors, the Supreme Court concludes that any uncertainty arising from flexible working arrangements cannot be resolved to the detriment of the employee. The judgment states that it was for the employer to prove that the employee had stopped working or was genuinely taking a break when the heart attack occurred, rather than requiring the employee (or her representatives) to prove the opposite.
The judgment is particularly significant for the preventive management of remote working because it directly links protection against occupational accidents with the employer’s proper organisation of remote work. In practice, it demonstrates that matters traditionally regarded as organisational—such as working time recording, monitoring of breaks and the traceability of working hours—also acquire an occupational health and safety dimension and may prove decisive in determining whether an incident constitutes an occupational contingency.
Moreover, the doctrine established by the Court is fully consistent with the recent line of Supreme Court case law concerning remote working, in which the Court has progressively strengthened employers’ obligations regarding working time monitoring, the right to disconnect, psychosocial risk assessments, documentary traceability and the protection of employees’ health in flexible working environments.
In conclusion, Supreme Court Judgment (Plenary) No. 444/2026 of 23 April represents a significant development in the legal framework governing remote working. The judgment confirms that flexible working hours neither diminish employees’ legal protection nor alter the general rules governing occupational accidents. On the contrary, the Supreme Court reinforces the requirement for employers to implement effective systems for organising, monitoring and documenting working time, since the absence of such mechanisms may have decisive consequences both from an occupational health and safety perspective and in relation to Social Security matters and the classification of occupational contingencies. In doing so, the judgment consolidates a fundamental principle: remote working requires greater organisational control and documentary traceability, but never a lower level of legal protection for employees.
