Opinion ID: 1537228
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Arise in the course of employment

Text: Even if Bentt's injuries arose out of her employment, we hold that they are not compensable under the Act because the injections did not arise in the course of Bentt's employment. The determination whether an injury took place in the course of employment is made on the basis of the time, place and circumstances under which the injury occurred. [A]n accident occurs `in the course of employment' when it takes place within the period of employment, at a place where the employee may reasonably be expected to be, and while he or she is reasonably fulfilling duties of his or her employment or doing something reasonably incidental thereto. Kolson, 699 A.2d at 361 (most internal quotation marks omitted). In this case, there is little dispute that the injections took place at Bentt's workplace during work hours. The question, therefore, is whether Bentt was doing something reasonably incidental to her employment when she received her injections. Kolson, 699 A.2d at 361. To that, the answer plainly is no. There simply is no evidence that when Bentt was lying face down receiving injections from Buzzanell, she was engaging in a reasonable and foreseeable activity that [was] reasonably related to or incidental to . . . her employment. Id. The Hospital concedes that Bentt's injections were not directly related to her employment. It nonetheless attempts to fit this case into the workers' compensation paradigm by claiming that the injections constitute[d] a personal activity [that], as noted by the Compensation Review Board, [was] ultimately of mutual benefit to both Bentt and the Hospital. We have explained previously that the factual underpinnings of this argument are lacking. There is no evidence that Buzzanell's injections of Bentt were motivated by, or had the effect of, benefitting the Hospital. More importantly, as a legal matter, the Hospital misreads our statement in Kolson that the in the course of requirement may be satisfied where an injury occurs in the performance of an activity related to employment, which may include . . . an activity of mutual benefit to employer and employee. Kolson, 699 A.2d at 360 (internal quotation marks omitted). Under Kolson, what counts for the purposes of the in the course of analysis is whether the activity at issue relate[s] to [one's] employment. That an activity is beneficial to both the employer and the employee may, but does not necessarily, illustrate that relation. The Hospital's error lies in treating an example of how the rule may be satisfied as though the example itself were the rule. Tellingly, Kolson did not rest on the rationale that the employee's activity benefitted the employee and the employer alike. Rather, Kolson held that the in the course of requirement had been satisfied because the employee was engaged in an activity that was reasonable, foreseeable, and reasonably related or incidental to the employee's employment. Id. at 361. And in any event, Kolson is readily distinguishable. Kolson concerned employees whose work entails travel away from the employer's premises and who, therefore, are faced with the necessity of sleeping in hotels or eating in restaurants away from home. Kolson, 699 A.2d at 360. For such employees, travel is deemed a work-related risk because, unlike ordinary commuters, traveling employees are exposed, by virtue of their employment, to risks greater than those encountered by the traveling public. Id. As a result of the unique features of jobs that require travel, the traditional meaning of `arising in the course of the employment' generally is not followed in traveling employee cases. Id. at 361. In this case, by contrast, nothing in the record suggests that for the Hospital's employees, receiving injections was a work-related risk similar to the risks attendant to travel faced by traveling employees. As we have emphasized, there is no evidence that either the Hospital or its employees believed that getting injections in the manner in which Bentt got her ill-fated injections was a necessity that for all intents and purposes was incidental to the job. Nor is there evidence that the Hospital's employees face risks greater than those encountered by the [general] public, Kolson, 699 A.2d at 360, insofar as medical malpractice is concerned. Thus, there is no reason, as there was in Kolson, to relax the in the course of element. Accordingly, we hold that the in the course of employment requirement has not been met in this case. Therefore, Bentt did not suffer an injury within the meaning of the Act.