The 4th Chamber of the Regional Labor Court of the 15th Region denied a worker’s request to hold a service-providing company liable for moral damages related to a miscarriage she suffered, which she claimed resulted from direct contact with chemical cleaning products.
The employee was hired on October 3, 2022, but before completing one month at the company, on October 28, 2022, she suffered a miscarriage around the fifth week of pregnancy. At the Labor Court, the 3rd Labor Court of Piracicaba dismissed the worker’s claims, ruling that there was no “strong evidence of a causal relationship between the working conditions and the miscarriage.”
Dissatisfied with the decision, she appealed, arguing that her right to defense was denied due to the rejection of a medical examination, and reiterated her original claims for a work-related accident, moral damages, provisional job stability, and the subsidiary liability of the Municipality of Piracicaba, which contracted the company’s services—she had been working as a cleaner in a school.
According to the expert report assessing possible unhealthy conditions in the workplace, the employee’s activities were not considered hazardous, as she “used household cleaning products to clean classrooms, hallways, and the school yard.” Additionally, the report concluded that she “was provided with sufficient gloves to eliminate and/or neutralize potential chemical agents.”
Regarding the alleged violation of her right to defense, the reporting judge, substitute justice Cristiane Montenegro Rondelli, agreed with the lower court’s decision to deny the medical examination, based on the expert report which concluded that the worker “used only household cleaning products.” Furthermore, she had used these “common cleaning products, while wearing gloves, and for only 13 days—the actual period worked, as confirmed by her attendance records.”
The panel acknowledged that “miscarriages can be caused by multiple factors,” especially “in the first trimester of pregnancy,” but emphasized that “there is no record in the case files of a fetal histopathological exam,” and therefore “the requested medical examination would not, on its own, serve as conclusive evidence to clarify the cause of the pregnancy loss.” The worker also “did not allege any work accident that might have led to accidental ingestion or inhalation of chemical vapors, which could, even minimally, support an assumption of harm to the pregnancy.” In this context, “there was no denial of the right to defense, but rather a rejection of evidence deemed unnecessary to the case,” the court concluded.
Regarding the remaining claims, the panel found, based on the case record, that there was “no evidence whatsoever to suggest that the cause of the intrauterine death was related to her work.” (Case No. 0010874-76.2023.5.15.0137)