Laborer May Obtain Benefits Stemming from car Flipping on way from Jobsite

Danville, KY (WorkersCompensation.com) – When travelling is an implicit part of a worker’s job, the “coming and going rule” may not insulate the employer from claims over injuries that occur while on the road. 

A general laborer’s claim in the wake of a dramatic car accident in Dee Whitaker Concrete v. Ellison, No. 2021-SC-0070-WC (KY. Sup. Ct. 02/24/22), helps illustrate some of the factors courts consider when determining whether an employee may seek benefits for injuries that occur between a home office and a job site.  

The laborer for a concrete company regularly drove to the company's office in Danville, Kentucky before travelling out to various jobsites. 

One day, he headed to a jobsite two hours away, carpooling with the son of the owner of the company. On the way back from the jobsite to the office, before the two reached a restaurant where they planned to dine, the car flipped over. The laborer was thrown out of the car, losing several teeth, and suffering facial lacerations and various fractures in the process, as well as other serious injuries. 

The company denied the laborer’s worker's compensation claim, asserting that the coming and going rule foreclosed it. 

The court pointed out that an exception to the coming and going rule – the travelling employee doctrine – applied in this case. Under that doctrine, the court explained, an injury that occurs while the employee is in travel status is considered work-related unless the worker was engaged in a significant departure from the purpose of the trip. 

Here, the laborer's status as a traveling employee qualified as an exception to the going and coming rule, the court held. The court pointed out that his work required travel away from the employer's premises. Except for loading and unloading the trucks with equipment and tools, all of his work occurred away from the premises. "[T]he fact that the employees intended to stop at a restaurant for lunch does not constitute a distinct departure because the restaurant was on their route home, and they never made it to the restaurant," the court wrote. 

Moreover, the court observed, there was an implicit understanding that the job required the laborer to travel. Employees meeting at the company's shop before traveling to the Danville jobsite was an implicit part of the employment arrangement, the court held. Further, the employer acquiesced in this practice, the court remarked. For example, it provided company vehicles and paid for the gas in the vehicles that traveled to the jobsites, including the owner’s son's truck in which the laborer was a passenger. 

"[W]hen travel is a requirement of employment and is implicit in the understanding between the employee and the employer at the time the employment contract was entered into, then injuries which occur going to or coming from a work place will generally be held to be work-related and compensable," the court wrote. 

The court concluded that because the laborer qualified as a traveling employee, the going and coming rule did not bar his claim.