Chen Bi/Wen The work-related injury dispute caused by the mechanical calculation of the "48 hour" rescue time limit has finally been settled with the intervention of the Supreme People's Procuratorate and the Supreme People's Court five years after the death of the parties involved: the work-related injury determination has been established. This case, which has been included as a typical case by the Supreme People's Procuratorate, has recently been released to the public.

On April 29, 2021, employee Wu Mouping of a company in Guizhou suddenly felt unwell during work and was sent to the hospital. On May 1, despite rescue efforts, he passed away. The local human resources and social security bureau refused to recognize the work-related injury on the grounds that the rescue time exceeded "48 hours", and the family members filed an administrative lawsuit if they disagreed. The case has gone through first, second, and retrial, and has been determined not to be a work-related injury. After the highest inspection and review, appeal to the Supreme Court in accordance with the law. In April 2026, the Supreme People's Court held a retrial and determined that Wu Mouping had "died within 48 hours after unsuccessful rescue efforts", supporting the determination of work-related injuries. His family received compensation of over 920000 yuan.

The case was ultimately corrected, which was certainly the realization of justice. However, at this time, it had been exactly 5 years since the death of the worker Wu Mouping. Behind this is the family's daily persistence and waiting, the lawsuit is still unresolved, and the deceased has not received comfort for a long time. The provision of "48 hours" comes from Article 15 of the Work Injury Insurance Regulations, which originally intended to treat certain work-related deaths as work-related injuries. Narrowly defined work-related injuries are directly caused by work and are relatively easy to identify. But what if a worker suddenly falls ill on the job and the causal relationship between the illness and work is difficult to prove? The legislation has established the principle of "treating as work-related injury" for this purpose: if a person dies suddenly due to illness during working hours or on the job, or dies within 48 hours after unsuccessful rescue efforts, it shall be treated as a work-related injury.

The original intention of this rule is to reflect the protection of individuals, but if the "48 hour" rule is applied mechanically, it will bring a dilemma: family members will have to choose between continuing rescue and maintaining work-related injury benefits. If the work-related injury is not recognized because the rescue time has been extended, it is equivalent to a disguised punishment for the family's insistence on rescue and unwavering support. For example, in the case of Wu Mouping, the patient had no heartbeat or breathing at 11:20 on May 1st, but at the request of the family, the hospital continued to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation until 12:08 when he was declared dead. It is precisely these extended minutes that have become the core focus of controversy in this case. 48 hours "is a reference standard for determining the correlation between occupational disease and death, and the interpretation of this rule should adopt a substantive determination that is beneficial to workers. If the mechanical calculation, as explained by the Supreme People's Procuratorate in typical cases, puts family members in a moral dilemma between "giving up treatment to obtain work-related injuries" and "insisting on rescue but losing their rights", it clearly deviates from the legislative intent. The Supreme People's Procuratorate released the Wu Mouping case as a typical case to correct the mechanical application of the "48 hour" rule.

The determination of work-related injuries is an administrative act and is decided by the Human Resources and Social Security Bureau. When employees or their families are dissatisfied with the decision of the Human Resources and Social Security Bureau, they may file an administrative lawsuit with the court. After the first and second trials of administrative litigation, the parties may also apply for retrial to the people's court or apply for prosecutorial supervision to the people's procuratorate in accordance with the law. In the case of Wu Mouping, the family exhausted all legal remedies within five years. The willingness of the procuratorial organs to correct errors and prevent the legal supervision power from sleeping again is commendable, but at the same time, it should also be questioned why the cost of correction is often borne by the most vulnerable workers and their families when errors occur in the administrative and judicial systems? Can the relief mechanism for work-related injury identification be moved from post work to pre work?

Looking back at the past five years, the families of workers have experienced not only the legal process, but also the tug of war between administrative and judicial inertia and human nature. The grassroots human resources and social security department shall make a decision not to recognize work-related injuries based on the time of death declared by the hospital; The first instance court made a judgment based on the literal meaning of the law, the second instance upheld the original judgment, and the retrial has not yet changed the judgment. Everyone in the entire chain seems to be right, and every decision seems to be justified: if the opening is too wide, will the work-related injury fund be breached? Will the rights and interests of workers who truly need relief be encroached upon? These concerns are naturally reasonable, but when the legislative intent of "48 hours" is distorted, it becomes a cold timer machine, and law enforcement and judicial officials no longer resist the inertia of the system and no longer consider individual cases; In order to correct such mechanical application, the parties involved need to go through the first instance, second instance, and retrial procedures before knocking on the door of prosecutorial supervision.

Admitting that the system can make mistakes and designing error correction channels is certainly the rightful duty of the rule of law. But a truly warm governance system cannot rely on the last error correction procedure. The correction afterwards, no matter how loud and just, is also a kind of delayed justice. If we know that the cost of system correction is so high, we should shift our cautious focus and substantive mechanisms for resolving conflicts to the initial judgment stage of the Human Resources and Social Security Bureau and the first instance stage of grassroots courts.

You should know that for an ordinary family, it takes several years to exhaust their energy and fight against the vast administrative and judicial system, and the cost of safeguarding their rights is high enough to make most people give up. There may still be workers like Wu Mouping in the country whose families admitted their guilt after losing the first and second trials, and justice sank in the archives of already decided cases.

May this case be like a stone thrown into the water, causing ripples and bringing sustained institutional resonance. We hope that the Supreme People's Procuratorate and the Supreme People's Court will further clarify the application rules of treating illness and death as work-related injuries through judicial interpretations, guiding cases or typical cases, and benefit more workers.

(The author is an associate professor at China University of Political Science and Law)

(Author's Commentary)