A logger, who was bitten after attempting to capture a 6 foot long Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake from the roadway while on the job for a logging company, has failed in his attempt to sue his employer to cover his medical expenses after an Alabama appeals court ruled against him. According to an article in today's Courthouse News Service, the logger is reported to have:

"Caught as many as 100 snakes in his lifetime without ever once getting bitten, (and) said a co-worker was preparing to catch the snake, but looked inexperienced and on the verge of getting bitten. Odom grabbed the snake behind the head and dropped it in a bucket, but the snake reared up and bit both of Odom's hands several times. After being airlifted to a hospital in Mobile, Odom was in a coma for weeks and emerged totally disabled."

The appeals court ruled that:

"The snake on the roadway posed no risk - occupational or otherwise - to Odom so long as he remained in the vehicle in which he was riding; once he voluntarily exited the vehicle and attempted to catch the snake, the risk that caused Odom's injury was personal to him and not 'sufficiently related to [his] employment to be considered an occupational hazard,'" Judge Craig Pittman wrote for a five-member panel. "The hazard that Odom encountered on September 24, 2009, was not peculiar to loggers; it was one that would be shared by any passing motorist who, after having spied a snake on the roadway, alights from his or her vehicle and undertakes to catch the snake."