What Do You Think: Was Driver's Death While Crossing Street to Parking Lot Compensable?

Warwick, RI (WorkersCompensation.com) – Employees who drive have to park their cars for work, but when it comes to workers’ compensation, where they park them can make a big difference.

As a Rhode Island court had to recently consider, the going-and-coming rule might prevent an award of benefits if the employer does not own the lot, but exceptions may apply.

A driver for a rental car company died after being struck by a car while attempting to cross a road to get to where his vehicle was parked after work. The lot where the driver’s vehicle was parked was on offsite location that the company leased for employees. The company also provided shuttle service for employees making their way to and from the lot.

When drivers returned to the lot after hours, the shuttle service did not operate the way it did during morning hours, but instead another employee would bring drivers back to their personal vehicles after work. However, this did not always happen, and employee sometimes would not be able to find a ride to their vehicles.

The driver’s wife sought surviving-spouse compensation benefits and funeral expenses. The Workers’ Compensation Court denied her claim, concluding that the going-and-coming rule precluded her from recovering benefits. The wife appealed to court, and the court upheld the WCC decision, prompting her to appeal to the Rhode Island Supreme Court.

The going-and-coming rule operates to deny compensation when an injury occurs while an employee is traveling to or from the workplace, and thus under the rule, an injury does not raise out of and in the course of employment if sustained by an employee either while going to or coming from his place of work.

However, an exception applies under which employees are entitled to compensation if it can be demonstrated that a nexus or causal connection exists between the injury sustained the employment. For this exception to apply, the injury must have taken place within the period of employment, the injury must have occurred at a place where the employee might reasonably have been expected to be, and, at the time of the injury, the employee must have been reasonably fulfilling the duties of his job or performing some task incidental to those duties or to the conditions under which those duties were to be performed.

Additionally, the Rhode Island Supreme Court held in Branco v. Leviton Manufacturing Company Inc., 518 A.2d 621 (R.I. 1986) that an exception to the going-and-coming rule applies when: 1) the employer owns and maintains an employee parking area separate from its plant-facility grounds; 2) the employer takes affirmative action to control the route of the employee by directing the employee to park in that separate area; and 3) the employee is injured while traveling directly from the lot to the plant facility.

Did the going and coming rule prevent the driver’s wife from claiming surviving spouse benefits?

A. Yes. The company did not own or maintain the parking lot where the driver parked, so his injury was not compensable.

B. No. The driver’s injury occurred due to the lot’s location across the street, a risk that was unchangeable regardless of whether the company owned or leased the lot.

If you chose B, you agreed with the court in Phillips v. Enterprise Rent-A-Car Company, No. 2020-120-M.P. (R.I. 05/06/22), which held that the going-and-coming rule did not prevent the driver’s wife from claiming benefits. According to the court, regardless of ownership of the lot, the danger inherent in crossing the street to get rom the employment facility to the parking lot remained the same.

“Where the location of the parking facility, a condition that is unchangeable regardless of its ownership or maintenance, creates the risk of injury, [an employee] need not show employer ownership or maintenance of the parking lot to recover,” the court wrote. “Instead, … [an employee] need only show that the employer furnished a parking area for employee parking separate from its facility grounds.”

Thus, the court send the case back with instructions to find in the driver’s wife’s favor.

This feature does not provide legal advice.

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