As winter has arrived, the inevitable will occur: bad weather (and you thought I was going to say keeping your New Year’s Resolution). With bad weather comes a number of headaches, including shoveling snow, school cancellations (if you are a parent), and driving in sleet and snow to and from work. This article will provide a summary of an employee’s limited right to seek worker’s compensation for injuries resulting from accidents driving to and from work.
The Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Act provides that every employer is liable for compensation for injuries of each employee suffered in the course of employment. The Act, as well as court decisions interpreting the Act, provides generally that an injury or death sustained by an employee traveling to and from a place of employment does not occur in the course of employment (the “going and coming rule”), even if the employee is driving a company car at the time of the injury or death. The going and coming rule also applies to accidents where employees were carpooling together solely for their benefit (except for situations where the employer (i) requires its employees to participate in the carpool, (ii) reimburses the driver of the carpool for his or her expenses, (iii) gathers its employees at its place of business and subsequently disperses the employees to various work locations; or (iv) a supervisor makes arrangements for workers to meet at his house and then carpool to a worksite). As a result, the employee (or, his or her estate if death results) cannot file a claim for workers’ compensation as such accidents are not compensable under the Act.
As is often the case, however, some exceptions to the general rule exist. Injury or death from an accident where the employee is driving a motor vehicle will be deemed to have been sustained in the course of employment (and thus compensable under the Act) if one of the following exceptions applies: (a) the employee’s employment contract includes transportation to and from work; (b) the employee has no fixed place of work; (c) at the time of the accident the employee was on a “special mission” for the employer; and (d) special circumstances are such that the employee was furthering the employer’s business at the time of the accident. The employee has the burden of proving that he or she falls within one of these exceptions.
With respect to whether an employee is a traveling employee (thus subject to the “no fixed place of work” exception), courts make such a determination on a case-by-case basis. The courts consider factors such as whether the employee’s job duties involve travel, whether the employee works on the employer’s premises or whether the employee has no fixed place of work.
The courts have found that where an employee (for example, a construction worker) travels directly from his home to ajob site each day until the employer’s contract is completed, the employee has a fixed place of work. The courts’ rationale is that the employee reports to the same job site every day for an indefinite period of time and does not have the prospect of frequently changing job sites or of travel between multiple job sites. This is distinct from the situation where, from the employer’s central office, the employer dispatches its employees to various locations as the need arises by contacting employees several days before an assignment begins to determine the employees’ interest in accepting an assignment. The employee must travel to and from the job site on his or her own, is not reimbursed for travel expenses, and the employees’ calculation of his or her wages does not account for travel time.
As a matter of public policy, agreements in which an employee limits or waives his or her right to file a claim for workers’ compensation (under one of the exceptions to the coming and going rule) are void and not enforceable.
This article is a general analysis of the law. For analysis as to a specific factual scenario, please contact us.
– Andrew Berenson