The consolidation of remote work has forced courts to reinterpret traditional concepts of Labor Law within a very different organizational reality from that of conventional in-person work models. Concepts such as workplace, effective working time, and employer supervision have become significantly more complex when work is carried out from the employee’s home under flexible working arrangements.
In this context, the Spanish Supreme Court’s Judgment of April 23, 2026 (appeal no. 2505/2024) is particularly significant, as it examines the application of the presumption of work-relatedness under Article 156.3 of the General Social Security Act (LGSS) in a case involving remote work with flexible hours.
The ruling not only addresses whether a heart attack suffered by an employee while working remotely from home should be classified as a workplace accident, but also establishes important criteria regarding the burden of proof and the scope of employers’ time-tracking obligations in modern work organization models.
The Facts of the Case
The case arose from the death of an employee who worked as an administrative technician under a remote work arrangement from her home in Madrid several days per week.
The employee performed her duties under a flexible schedule ranging from 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. and was entitled to a lunch break, although the specific timing of that break had not been predetermined by the employer.
On February 21, 2022, she was found dead at her home by her son at approximately 8:00 p.m. The autopsy determined that the death had occurred around 3:00 p.m. as a result of an acute myocardial infarction. The forensic report also included a particularly relevant fact for the subsequent judicial analysis: the employee’s stomach was empty at the time of death.
At first instance, the Labor Court held that the event constituted a workplace accident. However, the High Court of Justice of Madrid later overturned that decision, considering that it had not been conclusively proven that the death occurred during effective working time.
The Legal Issue: Defining Working Time in Remote Work
The main legal difficulty in the case did not actually concern the place where the accident occurred. The Supreme Court started from a clear premise: in remote work arrangements, the employee’s home fully qualifies as a workplace for the purposes of applying the presumption established in Article 156.3 of the LGSS.
The real controversy concerned the temporal element of the presumption — namely, determining whether the heart attack actually occurred during working time.
The Court expressly acknowledged that flexible working models inevitably blur the temporal boundaries of work performance. In remote work systems with non-predetermined breaks and broad autonomy in organizing working hours, it is objectively more difficult to determine when the employee is effectively working and when they are engaged in strictly personal activities.
However, the Court rejected the idea that such temporal uncertainty should automatically operate to the detriment of the employee.
Labor
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One of the central aspects of the ruling is the importance the Court assigns to employers’ compliance with time-tracking obligations under Law 10/2021 on Remote Work.
In this case, the employer failed to provide a complete working-time record, and there was no precise evidence regarding breaks or rest periods. Nor could it prove that the employee had actually interrupted her workday for lunch or had ended her working activity before the heart attack occurred.
Added to this was an especially significant objective fact: the autopsy confirmed that the employee’s stomach was empty at the time of death. This circumstance, combined with the absence of conclusive records regarding breaks or disconnections, led the Court to reasonably conclude that the incident occurred during working time.
The judgment thus reflects a particularly important principle: in remote work environments, the quality and consistency of employers’ time-tracking systems may become decisive from an evidentiary standpoint.
The Supreme Court’s Doctrine on the Burden of Proof
Probably the most significant aspect of the ruling lies in the doctrine it establishes regarding the allocation of the burden of proof in remote work cases.
The Supreme Court distinguishes between situations in which the employer has technological tools to supervise and monitor activity, and situations in which work may be carried out entirely offline and without genuine employer control mechanisms.
In the first scenario, the burden will primarily fall on the employer to prove the employee’s effective working time, precisely because the monitoring mechanisms fall within the employer’s organizational and managerial sphere. In the second scenario, the initial burden of proof may fall on the employee where working hours are entirely indeterminate.
Nevertheless, the Court introduced a crucial qualification: flexible working arrangements cannot become a mechanism of reduced protection for remote workers when the employer fails to comply with its obligations regarding time tracking and work-activity traceability.
Practical Consequences of the Judgment
The practical significance of this decision is evident in a context of increasing implementation of hybrid and flexible remote work models.
The Supreme Court sends a clear message: the absence of effective systems for time tracking and traceability may ultimately operate procedurally against the employer, particularly in proceedings involving workplace accidents, determination of contingencies, or claims related to effective working time.
The ruling also requires many companies to rethink their internal remote work policies. It is no longer sufficient to implement merely formal time-recording systems; those mechanisms must genuinely and effectively document the evolution of the workday, breaks, and periods of disconnection.
Final Conclusion: A Doctrine Likely to Shape the Future of Remote Work
The Supreme Court’s judgment represents an important step in adapting traditional workplace accident doctrine to the new forms of service provision resulting from digitalization and remote work.
The Court expressly acknowledges that traditional methods of defining working time are becoming increasingly complex in contexts of remote work and flexible schedules, but rejects the idea that such complexity should lead to a reduction in workers’ legal protection.
The ruling also anticipates increasing litigation concerning remote time-tracking systems and places companies before an increasingly evident necessity: reviewing the actual adequacy of their systems for recording, supervising, and tracing working time.
