Opinion ID: 6317125
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Traveling Employee Exception Applies

Text: The traveling employee exception was explained in Gaines Gentry Thoroughbreds/Fayette Farms v. Mandujana, 366 S.W.3d 456, 462-63 (Ky. 2012): Kentucky applies the traveling employee doctrine in instances where a worker’s employment requires travel. Grounded in the positional risk doctrine, the traveling employee doctrine considers an injury that occurs while the employee is in travel status to be work-related unless the worker was engaged in a significant departure from the purpose of the trip. (Citations omitted). In Gaines Gentry, the employer and employee agreed that the employee would travel to yearling sales and return to his duties at the employer’s Lexington farm when a sale ended. Id. The employee was injured traveling back to Lexington from a sale. Id. at 462. Upholding the compensability of his workers’ compensation claim, the Court reasoned that [t]he accident in which he was injured occurred during the “necessary and inevitable” act of completing the journey he undertook for Gaines Gentry. In other words, travel necessitated by the claimant’s employer placed him in what turned out to be a place of danger and he was injured as a consequence. Id. at 463. The same reasoning applies here. Based on the evidence presented, Ellison’s status as a traveling employee qualifies as an exception to the going and coming rule. His work required travel away from the employer’s premises. Except for loading and unloading the trucks with equipment and tools, all of Ellison’s work for Whitaker Concrete occurred away from the premises on various jobsites. The fact that employees were not paid for their time while traveling back to the employer’s 6 premises does not change this conclusion. The return trip was a necessary and inevitable act of returning from the out-of-town jobsite and was necessitated by the furtherance of the employer’s business interests. Additionally, the 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. Ellison’s employment was the reason for his presence at what turned out to be a place of danger. Black v. Tichenor, 396 S.W.2d 794, 797 (Ky. 1965). Whitaker Concrete argues that the traveling employee exception does not apply because that travel status only applies to employees whose work entails travel away from their usual place of employment and asserts that Ellison’s usual place of employment was the jobsite in Danville. Admittedly, no concrete work was performed at the Whitaker Concrete shop where employees met to travel to jobsites. But Whitaker Concrete and its employees, including Ellison, had met at Whitaker Concrete and traveled to the Danville jobsite for approximately six weeks prior to the accident. Even more appropriate to the case at bar is the idea that when 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, except when a distinct departure or deviation on a personal errand is shown. Olsten-Kimberly Quality Care v. Parr, 965 S.W.2d 155, 157 (Ky. 1998) (quotations and citations omitted). Whitaker Concrete employees meeting at the company’s shop and traveling together to the Danville jobsite was an 7 implicit part of the employment arrangement. Whitaker acquiesced to this practice by providing company vehicles and paying for the gas in the vehicles that traveled to the jobsites, including his son’s truck in which Ellison was a passenger on the date of the accident. This testimony constitutes substantial evidence. As such, Ellison qualifies as a traveling employee and therefore his workers’ compensation claim is not barred by the going and coming rule.