Appeals Panel Finds Injury between Parking Lot and Work to be Noncompensable
The appeals panel has reversed an ALJ’s decision and order and rendered a decision in favor of the carrier in a claim involving an accident that happened in the street between the employer’s parking lot and a building in which the employee had just finished working. The decision, Texas Division of Workers’ Compensation Appeals Panel Decision No. 190602, was filed June 3, 2019.
The claimant testified that she was injured when she was struck by a car walking to her car. She said that upon her arrival at work on the date of injury, she had parked her car as directed by a traffic attendant for the Employer . It was undisputed that upon finishing her duties the claimant was walking to the parking lot to retrieve her vehicle when she was struck by a car while crossing the street. The ALJ determined the claimant had sustained a compensable injury applying the access doctrine.
The appeals panel reversed the ALJ’s determination that the claimant had been compensably injured and rendered a decision in favor of the carrier. In doing so, the appeals panel first noted the general rule in Texas that workers’ compensation benefits do not apply to injuries received going to and from work. Texas General Indemnity Co. v. Bottom, 365 S.W.2d 350 (Tex. 1963).
The appeals panel next observed that an exception exists in those cases which come within the access doctrine, where “the employer has evidenced an intention that the particular access route or area be used by the employee in going to and from work, and where such access route or area is so closely related to the employer’s premises as to be fairly treated as a part of the premises.” Texas Compensation Insurance Co. v. Matthews, 519 S.W.2d 630 (Tex. 1974). The panel described the holding in Matthews:
Matthews concerned an employee who was injured when she fell in a street on her way to work. In that case, the Supreme Court briefly summarized prior cases concerning the access doctrine, including Kelty v. Travelers Insurance Co., 391 S.W.2d 558 (Tex. Civ. App.-Dallas 1965, writ ref’d n.r.e.) which held that whether the employee was within the course and scope of her employment at the time of her injury presented a fact question, which precluded the rendition of summary judgment in favor of the carrier. In Kelty, the employee sustained injuries after she slipped on an icy sidewalk 10 to 12 feet from the employer’s building, which sidewalk was found to be an appurtenance to the premises leased by the employer who was responsible for maintaining it. However, the Matthews court wrote that Kelty had carried the access exception “as far as it reasonably could be, without an amendment to the Workmen’s Compensation Act,” stating that “no case has extended the ‘access exception’ out into the public streets where other members of the public are subject to the same hazard.”
The panel then noted that in this case, the claimant’s injury occurred while she was walking in the roadway of a public street and was thus “a consequence of risk and hazards to which all members of the traveling public are subject rather than risk and hazards having to do with and originating in the work or business of the employer.” Therefore, the appeals panel reversed the ALJ’s determination to the contrary.
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