On this page
The short answer
Compensable — and it does two things an ordinary injury does not.
It unlocks a psychiatric rating that most injured workers cannot get, and it frequently produces a second case against someone other than your employer.
The psychiatric part matters most
For injuries on or after January 1, 2013, Labor Code § 4660.1(c)(1) normally blocks any increase in your rating for a psychiatric disorder arising as a consequence of a physical injury.
Section 4660.1(c)(2) carves out an exception where the psychiatric injury results from being a victim of a violent act, or direct exposure to a significant violent act.
Being assaulted at work is exactly that. Which means the psychiatric component of your injury is ratable, where for most injured workers it is not. This is one of the most valuable and least-claimed provisions in the statute, and it is routinely missed because nobody connects the assault to the rating rule. How psychiatric injury works.
Ask for the Violent Incident Log
Labor Code § 6401.9, effective July 1, 2024, requires nearly every California employer to maintain a workplace violence prevention plan and a Violent Incident Log recording every incident.
Ask for it by name, in writing. It is a contemporaneous record made by your employer, and in an assault claim it is frequently the strongest single piece of evidence in the file — including for prior incidents that show the employer knew about the risk.
If they have no log, that is a finding too.
The second case
Workers' compensation is the exclusive remedy against your employer. It is not the exclusive remedy against the person who assaulted you, or against a third party whose negligence allowed it.
Depending on the facts, that can include the assailant, a property owner or landlord who failed to provide security in a foreseeable-risk setting, or a security contractor. A civil case pays for pain and suffering, which workers' compensation does not. When a third-party case exists.
The one bar, and it is narrow
§ 3600(a)(7) excludes an injury arising out of an altercation in which the injured employee is the initial physical aggressor.
Initial physical aggressor. Not the person who spoke first, not the person who was rude, not the person the employer would rather blame. Verbal exchange is not physical aggression, and defending yourself is not initiating.
What to do
Report it immediately and in writing, and ask that it be entered in the Violent Incident Log.
Get a police report if the police were called, and request the number.
Ask about security video before it is overwritten — most systems overwrite within days to weeks. Ask in writing, today.
Say what you are feeling, to the doctor. Sleep, hypervigilance, dread of returning to that shift. It belongs in the record from the first visit, not from month six.
Sources
Labor Code § 4660.1(c)(1)–(2) (psychiatric add-on and the violent-act exception) · § 3208.3 (psychiatric injury standard) · § 3600(a)(7) (initial physical aggressor) · § 6401.9 (workplace violence prevention plan and Violent Incident Log, effective July 1, 2024) · § 3852 et seq. (third-party recovery and the employer's lien).
General information about California law, not legal advice about your case.
Law Offices of Solov & Teitell, APC · (213) 380-9310 · 24/7 (213) 463-6469
Printed from https://www.solovteitell.com/answers/i-was-hurt-by-a-customer/ · Last reviewed 2026-08-23