Opinion ID: 2629801
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The injury occurred in the course of and arose out of the claimant's employment. [1]

Text: ¶ 14 A compensable work-related injury must occur in the course of and arise out of the worker's employment. [2] The in the course of prong relates to the time, place or circumstances under which the injury occurs. [3] To be considered in the course of employment, an accidental injury must occur within the period of employment at a place where the worker reasonably may be and while reasonably fulfilling a duty of employment, or engaged in doing something incidental thereto. [4] It tests whether, at the critical moment, the claimant was on a mission for the employer. [5] The arise out of prong contemplates a causal connection between the act engaged in at the time the injury occurs and the requirements of employment. [6] To meet the arising out of test, it must appear to the rational mind, upon considering all the circumstances, that a causal connection exists between the conditions under which the work is to be performed and the resulting injury. [7] ¶ 15 Ordinarily, an injury sustained while going to or from an employer's premises is not one which arises out of and in the course of employment within the meaning of the Act. [8] However, there is an exception to the rule if the injury occurs on premises owned or controlled by the employer. [9] In Swanson, the Court recognized that: When landlord of several industrial tenants furnishes a parking yard for the joint use of such tenants and their employees, and the use thereof by employees is acquiesced in by the employers, such area constitutes premises of such employers in the application of the Workmen's Compensation Law. The reason for this exception is that, for workers' compensation purposes, the course of employment does not begin and end with the actual work a claimant was hired to do. It also covers the period between entering the employer's premises a reasonable time before beginning any actual work and leaving within a reasonable time after the day's work is done. [10] ¶ 16 Since 1944, this Court has consistently recognized that when an injury occurs on premises owned or controlled by the employer while going to and coming from work, it is deemed to have arisen out of and in the course of employment. [11] Likewise, we have consistently limited the application of this rule by requiring a causal connection between the injury and employment [12] or that the precipitating risk of harm was created or maintained by the employer. [13] ¶ 17 In Fox v. Nat'l Carrier, 1985 OK 91, 709 P.2d 1050, a truck driver recovered workers' compensation benefits after choking on a piece of sausage and rupturing a cervical disc. The Court held that because eating is necessarily incidental to the work of a traveling employee, injuries to traveling employees arising out of eating are compensable under the workers' compensation act. In 1986, in an apparent response to Fox, the Oklahoma Legislature amended the Workers' Compensation Act (Act), 85 O.S. Supp.1986 § 3 (7) to require that only injuries having as their source a risk not purely personal but one that is reasonably connected with the conditions of employment shall be deemed to arise out of employment. [14] ¶ 18 The Court addressed the legislative change to the Act in American Management Systems v. Burns, 1995 OK 58, 903 P.2d 288. In Burns, we determined that the Legislature's revision required that the risk responsible for the injury be causally connected to the employment. The risk must exceed ordinary hazards to which the general public is exposed for the injury to be compensable. Burns involved a worker's widow who sought compensation for death benefits after her husband was robbed and murdered at a motel while traveling for his employer-clearly an off premises injury. Nothing in the record showed the presence of any employment-related risk factors separate from those which could be encountered by the general public using similar lodging. Consequently, the worker's death was not proven to have arisen out of his employment. ¶ 19 Two years later, in Odyssey/Americare of Oklahoma v. Worden, 1997 OK 136, 948 P.2d 309 we recognized that there were three categories of injury-causing risks which an employee may encounter while in the course of employment: risks solely connected with employment which are compensable; personal risks, which are not compensable; and neutral risks, such as weather risks, which are neither distinctly connected with employment nor purely personal. Whether a neutral risk which causes an injury is employment-related or personal is a question of fact to be decided in each case. ¶ 20 Worden involved a field nurse who worked out of her home scheduling appointments with patients and traveling to visit them. The nurse was seeking compensation for an injury that occurred when she slipped on wet grass in her yard while walking to her car to go to a work-related appointment. The Workers' Compensation Court denied benefits and a three-judge review panel of the Workers' Compensation Court reversed the trial court. On remand, the trial court awarded benefits and the employer appealed the order. The Court of Civil Appeals sustained it. We held that the order allowing compensation was erroneous because the claimant encountered the neutral risk of wet and slippery grass due to rain. Her employment exposed her to no more risk of injury from wet grass than that encountered by any member of the general public. The injury occurred off the employer's premises at the nurse's residence. Because no evidence was presented linking the risk to her employment, the injury did not arise from her employment. ¶ 21 Worden and Burns are not dispositive of this cause. In neither case did the Court consider injuries sustained on the employer's premises while going to or from the workplace. Facts more analogous to those presented here are found in Treadway, and Swanson, which we have discussed, and in E.I. Du Pont De Nemours & Co. v. Redding, 1944 OK 151, 147 P.2d 166. ¶ 22 In Redding, a worker tripped and fell while walking to his car to go home in a parking lot maintained for employees as well as for the general public. The employer denied that the injury arose out of and in the course of employment, arguing that there was no causal connection between the claimant's injury and his employment. The Redding Court said: . . . His [the worker's] going upon the parking lot, controlled and supervised by the employer, was a reasonable incident to his going home. A reasonable time must be given an employee to separate himself from the plant and its dangers. . . . The fact that the accident, causing the injury occurred on the premises of employer does not of itself determine the liability of the employer, but the fact that it occurred on the premises operated and controlled by employer, connected with the fact that employee was rightfully upon the premises, as a result of his employment, and was leaving in the customary manner at the close of the day's work makes the act of leaving `in the course of employment.'. . . The proximity of time and place of the accident causing the injury coincides with the time and place of employment, and we are of the opinion that the injury arose out of and in the course of employment. ¶ 23 We recently re-examined circumstances in which an on-the-premises injury occurred in Corbett v. Express Personnel, 1997 OK 40, 936 P.2d 932. Corbett involved a claimant who was injured when he lost control of his motorcycle while attempting to pull out of his employer's parking lot. We recognized that employee injuries occurring on an employer's premises and sustained while going to or from work may be compensable if the claimant's employment is shown to have a connection to the causative risk encountered or that the risk was created by the employer. [15] Because the injury occurred on a parking lot provided by the employer for the employee's use, we evaluated whether the claimant's presence in the parking lot satisfied the necessary components of an employment-related purpose. ¶ 24 The undisputed purpose for the employee's trip was to do personal business with his bank. We determined that because the employee's mission was purely personal, it would not be attributed to his employment and that his presence in the parking lot did not ipso facto make his injury compensable. However, we noted that: When the employee's presence in the workplace parking lot is unquestionably employment related, there is no need for the court to further inquire into the `arising out of' prong as a separate issue. [16] ¶ 25 In the present case, the shopping center parking lot constitutes the employer's premises. [17] It is undisputed that the claimant was arriving to begin her work day when she fell and injured herself. Nothing in the record establishes that her presence in the parking lot was in the furtherance of a personal purpose. [18] Her presence in the parking lot was employment related. The claimant is analogous to the claimants in Redding, Treadway, and Swanson, and would be analogous to the Corbett claimant had his mission not been purely personal. The fact that the claimant was rightfully on the premises as the result of her employment and was arriving to work in the customary manner at the beginning of the work day makes her act of arriving to work in the course of employment. [19] The proximity of time and place of the accident causing the injury coincides with the time and place of employment. [20] She was injured on the employer's premises while crossing the parking lot to enter her workplace in a customary manner known to and acquiesced in by the employerthe claimant's employment had a connection to the causative risk encountered. ¶ 26 Today, we affirm the teaching of Worden that injury causing risks encountered while in the course of employment are compensable. In so doing, we hold as a matter of law that purely employment-related risks encountered while in the scope of employment and arising from on premises accidents-even those which under other facts might present a neutral risk, i.e. weather conditions-are compensable. Such causes are distinguishable from Worden and Burns in which the employees were required to show an increased risk in off-premises injuries where issues of employment-related injuries were present. The finding of the Workers' Compensation Court that the claimant's injury did not arise out of and in the course of her employment is erroneous as a matter of law. [21]