IN THE COMMONWEALTH COURT OF PENNSYLVANIA

Piedmont Airlines, Inc. and New :

Hampshire Insurance Company :

c/o Sedgwick Claims Management :

Services, Inc., :

Petitioners :

:

v. : No. 468 C.D. 2018

: Submitted: July 27, 2018

Workers’ Compensation Appeal :

Board (Watson), :

Respondent :

BEFORE: HONORABLE ROBERT SIMPSON, Judge

HONORABLE CHRISTINE FIZZANO CANNON, Judge

HONORABLE DAN PELLEGRINI, Senior Judge

OPINION NOT REPORTED

MEMORANDUM OPINION BY

SENIOR JUDGE PELLEGRINI FILED: August 20, 2018

Piedmont Airlines, Inc. (Employer) and New Hampshire Insurance 

Company c/o Sedgwick Claims Management Services, Inc. petition for review of

the Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board (Board) order affirming a Workers’

Compensation Judge’s (WCJ) decision that granted Craig Watson’s (Claimant)

claim petition. The WCA concluded that Claimant sustained a work injury while

on the premises for which Employer was responsible. For the following reasons, 

we affirm.
2

I.

The facts are not in dispute. Claimant works as a training supervisor 

for Employer, training new employees to be gate agents. He is provided with a 

badge granting him access to certain areas of the Philadelphia International Airport 

(Airport), including employee parking lots. The Department of Aviation (DOA) 

issues the badges for which Employer pays a one-time administrative fee to 

process the background check necessary for the employee to receive the badge.

On February 5, 2016, Claimant was scheduled to work from 8:00 a.m. 

to 6:30 p.m. His wife drove him to the Bartram Avenue employee parking lot,

which is one of two parking lots that are designated for employee parking. The 

DOA owns, operates and maintains both lots. As he walked through the parking 

lot towards a shelter to catch an employee shuttle, Claimant slipped and fell on a 

pile of snow, landing on his right hand at an awkward angle and breaking his right 

ring finger.

Claimant reported his injury to Employer’s human resources 

department, which referred him to Premier Orthopedics where his right hand was 

put in a cast. Claimant returned to work the following week but the swelling in his 

hand made his cast uncomfortable. Employer’s workers’ compensation (WC) case 

manager took him off the work schedule and referred him to Michael Rivlin, M.D.

(Dr. Rivlin) at the Rothman Institute who performed surgery on his right hand. 

Claimant initially returned to work the last week of February 2016, but because of 

continuing pain in his right hand, Dr. Rivlin faxed a doctor’s note to the human 

resources department stating that Claimant was to return home.
3

In March 2016, Claimant filed a WC claim petition alleging that he 

had been injured in the course of his employment and seeking temporary partial 

disability benefits from February 5, 2016, to February 9, 2016, and ongoing 

temporary total disability benefits beginning on February 10, 2016. Employer 

issued a notice of WC denial denying that the injury occurred on Employer’s 

premises or that Claimant was in the course and scope of his employment at the 

time of the injury. On May 31, 2016, Claimant returned to work.

After a hearing, the WCJ found that Claimant’s injury arose in the 

course of his employment because he slipped and fell while walking in an 

employee parking lot that required an identification card for entry in order to board 

a bus designated for Airport employees only. The WCJ ordered Employer to pay 

weekly wage benefits from February 16, 2016, until May 31, 2016, when benefits 

were suspended because Claimant returned to work.

Employer appealed this decision to the Board, which affirmed, adding 

that the parking lot was a “reasonable means of access to [C]laimant’s workplace” 

and “was so connected to [Employer’s] business as to form an integral part 

thereof.” (Record (R.) Item No. 8, Opinion – Commissioner, p. 4.) This petition 

for review followed.

II.

On appeal, Employer argues that the Board erred in finding that 

Claimant was injured in the course of his employment because Employer did not 

require Claimant to use the Bartram Avenue parking lot. It also contends that 
4

Claimant’s presence in the parking lot was not required because he did not drive to 

work or park a car in the lot on the date of his injury.1

Pursuant to Section 301(c)(1) of the Workers’ Compensation Act 

(Act),2the term “injury” refers to:

[A]n injury to an employe, regardless of his previous 

physical condition . . . arising in the course of his 

employment and related thereto, and such disease or 

infection as naturally results from the injury or is 

aggravated, reactivated or accelerated by the injury . . . . 

The term “injury arising in the course of his 

employment,” as used in this article, shall not include an 

injury caused by an act of a third person intended to 

injure the employe because of reasons personal to him, 

and not directed against him as an employe or because of 

his employment . . . but shall include all other injuries 

sustained while the employe is actually engaged in the 

furtherance of business or affairs of the employer, 

whether upon the employer’s premises or elsewhere, and 

shall include all injuries caused by the condition of the 

premises or by the operation of the employer’s 

business or affairs thereon, sustained by the employe, 

who, though not so engaged, is injured upon the 

premises occupied by or under the control of the 

employer, or upon which the employer’s business or 

affairs are being carried on, the employe’s presence 

thereon being required by the nature of his 

employment.

 

1 This Court’s standard of review is limited to determining whether the necessary 

findings of fact are supported by substantial evidence, whether an error of law has been 

committed, or whether constitutional rights have been violated. PPL v. Workers’ Compensation 

Appeal Board (Kloss), 92 A.3d 1276 (Pa. Cmwlth. 2014).

2 Act of June 2, 1915, P.L. 991, as amended, 77 P.S. § 411(1).
5

77 P.S. § 411(1) (emphasis added). Under this provision, where an employee is 

not directly engaged in the performance of his duties, an injury still may be 

compensable if the claimant establishes that: (1) the injury occurred on employer’s 

premises, (2) the claimant’s presence thereon was required by the nature of his 

employment, and (3) the injury was caused by the condition of the premises or by 

operation of employer’s business thereon. See US Airways, Inc. v. Workers’ 

Compensation Appeal Board (Bockelman), 179 A.3d 1177, 1180 (Pa. Cmwlth. 

2018); U.S. Airways v. Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board (Dixon), 764 A.2d 

635, 640 (Pa. Cmwlth. 2000).

Employer contends that Claimant fails to satisfy the first prong of this

test because the injury did not occur on Employer’s premises but on DOA’s

premises.3 In construing the term “premises” as contemplated by Section 301(c)(1) 

of the Act, the determinative question is not who owns or controls the premises but

whether the site of the accident is so connected with the employer’s business as to 

form an integral part thereof. Epler v. North American Rockwell Corporation, 393 

A.2d 1163, 1166-67 (Pa. 1978). The critical factor is not the employer’s control 

over the area, but whether the employer caused the area to be used by employees in 

the performance of their assigned tasks. Id. at 1167. This Court has held that a 

reasonable means of access to the workplace is considered an integral part of the 

 

3 Employer also argues that Claimant is not entitled to benefits because he was merely 

commuting to work. The general rule is that an employer is not liable to the employee for 

injuries received off the employer’s premises while the employee is traveling to or from work. 

Peterson v. Workmen’s Compensation Appeal Board (PRN Nursing Agency), 597 A.2d 1116, 

1119 (Pa. 1991). This argument, however, does not apply because we find that Claimant was on 

Employer’s premises at the time of his injury.
6

employer’s business, and, therefore, is part of the employer’s premises. Newhouse 

v. Workmen’s Compensation Appeal Board (Harris Cleaning Services, Inc.), 530 

A.2d 545, 546-47 (Pa. Cmwlth. 1987).

Employer argues that even though its employees can park in the DOA 

lots, they should not be considered Employer’s premises because its employees are 

not mandated to use the parking lots. However, just because an employee is not 

required to use the premises, if a means of access is customarily used by 

employees for ingress and egress, that property can be such an integral part of an 

employer’s business as to be considered part of the employer’s premises. 

Bockelman, 179 A.3d at 1181.

In Bockelman, the claimant was an employee of US Airways, 

Inc.,based out of the Airport. The claimant caught an employee shuttle from the 

exact same employee parking lot on Bartram Avenue and slipped on a spill on the 

floor of the shuttle bus sustaining an injury. Although US Airways did not 

mandate that employees use the employee shuttle busses, the shuttle bus was a 

customary means of ingress and egress for the employees and part of the 

employer’s premises. Similarly, in this case, there is no dispute that the Airport 

parking lot was a customary means of ingress and egress for its employees, making 

it part of its premises.

Even if Claimant met the first prong of the test – that the injury 

occurred on Employer’s premises – Employer argues that Claimant was not 

required to be on the premises where the injury occurred because Claimant did not 
7

drive to work that day and, therefore, had no reason to be in the employee parking 

lot.

However, in ICT Group v. Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board 

(Churchray-Woytunick), 995 A.2d 927 (Pa. Cmwlth. 2010), we considered whether 

a claimant who sustained an injury from slipping on ice on her employer’s 

premises when leaving for her lunch break was injured within the course of her 

employment. The employer argued that the nature of her employment did not 

require her to be present in the parking lot, but rather she chose to be there during 

her lunch break. We held that the claimant’s presence was required because once 

an employee is on the employer’s premises, getting to or leaving the employee’s 

workstation is a necessary part of an employee’s employment.

In this case, Claimant was dropped off at the parking lot to board a 

shuttle bus to arrive at work. In order to do so, Claimant had to walk through the 

employee lot using his security badge – a badge that only granted him clearance to 

enter the lot, not his wife who had driven him to the lot. Claimant’s presence in 

the parking lot to get the employee shuttle bus was so connected with his 

employment relationship that it was required by the nature of his employment.

Because Claimant was injured on Employer’s premises, his presence 

was required due to the nature of his employment and the condition of the premises 

caused the injury, we affirm the Board’s decision.

_________________________________

DAN PELLEGRINI, Senior Judge
IN THE COMMONWEALTH COURT OF PENNSYLVANIA

Piedmont Airlines, Inc. and New :

Hampshire Insurance Company :

c/o Sedgwick Claims Management :

Services, Inc., :

Petitioners :

:

v. : No. 468 C.D. 2018

:

Workers’ Compensation Appeal :

Board (Watson), :

Respondent :

O R D E R

AND NOW, this 20th day of August, 2018, the Workers’ 

Compensation Appeal Board’s order of March 9, 2018, is affirmed.

_________________________________

DAN PELLEGRINI, Senior Judge