Court Opinion

ID: 9679045
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:39:18.772571+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:09.883231
License: Public Domain

*434Otis, Justice
(dissenting).
I cannot agree that the compensation act was intended to confer benefits on an employee whose injury did not occur in the course of his employment nor while he was engaged in any personal mission permitted by the terms of his employment agreement. As I read the cases, we have ruled squarely the other way in a line of decisions commencing with Callaghan v. Brown, 218 Minn. 440, 16 N. W. (2d) 317, up to and including Mills v. Standard Parts Serv. Co. 269 Minn. 501, 131 N. W. (2d) 546.
When this employee left the premises prior to the time his work began, his only purpose was to deposit in the mailbox the crossword puzzle he had worked out for his own benefit. It is true that he was injured while still on the premises, but no case holds that this in itself is sufficient to bring an employee under the act. Injuries occurring during an errand personal to the employee do not give rise to benefits unless the activity has become a fixed custom which amounts to a condition of employment.
In the Callaghan case we denied compensation to the widow of an employee killed by an automobile while going to a lunch counter during a coffee break, a practice he had followed for some 30 years. We stated (218 Minn. 441, 16 N. W. [2d] 318):
“* * * xhe accident to deceased occurred within the period of his employment, but he was not at the time in the performance of any duty owing to his employer. He was not at a place where his duties required him to be. His death cannot in any way be traced to the nature of his employment nor to a risk to which his employer’s business exposed him. He was where he was solely in furtherance of his own personal desires and accommodation. There was no causal connection between his employment and the exposure to the risks which caused his death. He did not fall within any of the special exceptions which extend the coverage of the compensation law. He was not a traveler in the course of his employment, nor did he have any mission of the employer to fulfill in connection with his personal errand. *435The performance of his duties to his employer did not require him to go upon the street.”
We have cited the Callaghan case with approval in a number of subsequent decisions.1
In Locke v. County of Steele, 223 Minn. 464, 27 N. W. (2d) 285, we allowed compensation where the employee went to the post office as a part of her duties with her employer. There we stated (223 Minn. 469, 27 N. W. [2d] 288):
“* * * The true test in determining employe’s coverage under the act was not the route she happened to be following at the time of her injury, but her presence at a place where, and during the time when, her services were required to be performed under her employment contract.”
We distinguished the Callaghan case in Sweet v. Kolosky, 259 Minn. 253, 106 N. W. (2d) 908, which also involved a coffee-break situation. There we held that this was a matter of right in the employment agreement and while thus engaged an employee remained within the scope of his employment. However, we pointed out (259 Minn. 256, 106 N. W. [2d] 910):
“* * * Cases where the employee leaves the employer’s premises on an errand solely for his own benefit and having no relationship to the employment or the rights or privileges granted under the employment agreement must be distinguished from those, such as the one before us, where a temporary departure from the employer’s premises is necessary in order to exercise a right or privilege granted as part of the employment agreement.”
Again we cited Callaghan with approval in Johannsen v. Acton Const. Co. Inc. 264 Minn. 540, 119 N. W. (2d) 826, and recognized *436the rule that ordinarily an employee who is injured, either in going to or from the premises of his employer, whether it be during a lunch hour or before or after his work actually commences or ceases, is not entitled to the benefits of the act unless he is engaged in a service for his employer while so traveling.2 We there concluded by stating (264 Minn. 549, 119 N. W. [2d] 831):
* * It is only reasonable to conclude that an employee is within the protection of the act as long as he is exposed to a hazard causally connected with the employment and peculiar to it. This does not mean that the protection will continue when he has entered the avenues of travel where he is exposed to no work-connected hazard or any hazard greater than that to which all others not so employed are exposed.”
In my opinion, Gagne v. Oreck, 266 Minn. 1, 122 N. W. (2d) 589, governs. We there held that an employee assaulted while still on the premises would not be entitled to compensation if he was injured while making advances to a patron, which we pointed out would not be in furtherance of his employer’s business but would be entirely personal.
Finally, in the recent case of Mills v. Standard Parts Serv. Co. 269 Minn. 501, 131 N. W. (2d) 546, we again approved the Callaghan case in denying compensation. We also distinguished the Locke case, observing that there the employee had no object in going to the post office except to serve her employer, in contrast to the case at hand.
In summary, I respectfully submit that the risk to which this employee was exposed had absolutely no bearing on his employment and was not an implied or express condition of his employment agreement, as in the coffee-break cases, and that to allow recovery will *437extend compensation for every conceivable injury occurring on the employer’s premises.
While it may well be that the employee has a good common-law cause of action for negligence against his employer for maintaining the premises in an unsafe condition, that is not a matter now before us. For the reasons stated, I would reverse.
Mr. Justice Frank T. Gallagher took no part in the consideration of decision of this case.

 Rhea v. Overholt, 222 Minn. 467, 471, 25 N. W. (2d) 656, 658; McBride v. Preston Creamery Assn. 228 Minn. 93, 94, 36 N. W. (2d) 404, 405; Kaplan v. Alpha Epsilon Phi Sorority, 230 Minn. 547, 550, note 2, 42 N. W. (2d) 342, 344, note 1. See, also, Note, 46 Minn. L. Rev. 199, 209.

 “Although a reasonable interval is allowed before actual working time during which an injury would normally be compensable, a personal deviation at this point can of course break the link with employment. For example, the course of employment is suspended if an employee, having arrived early, starts out the door for a coffee break even before beginning work.” 1 Larson, Workmen’s Compensation Law, § 21.60.