Court Opinion

ID: 9694256
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 17:32:20.39556+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:58.250028
License: Public Domain

Schreiber, J.,
dissenting. The majority holds that an employee who was injured after arriving home from his regular work schedule is entitled to worker’s compensation simply because he was on call. Rather than acknowledging that the going and coming rule no longer has any vitality in view of its decisions today, Wyatt v. Metropolitan Maintenance Co., 74 N. J. 167 (1977), Watson v. Nassau Inn, 74 N. J. 155 (1977), and Briggs v. American Biltrite, 74 N. J. 185 (1977), and its previous decision in Hornyak v. The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., 63 N. J. 99 (1973), the Court has extended compensability to the situation where the employee suffers an injury after completion of his regular *183work and arrival at home at a time when he is subject to call, but not being compensated.
Eo authority is cited for the proposition enunciated except Jasaitis v. Paterson, 31 N. J. 81 (1959). In Jasaitis, a uniformed police officer was held to be entitled to compensation for accidental injury suffered while en route home. Under police department regulations an officer was permitted to wear his uniform for one hour after his fixed tour of duty. The regulations also provided that while in uniform he was subject to specific departmental restrictions. The Court commented that in those circumstances the police officer was implicated in the job of public protection and was in the course of his duties during the trip home. The work relationship in Jasaitis cannot be equated with the instant case. Jasaitis is not an on call status situation. It involves the action of a policeman in uniform in accordance with department regulations. The Jasaitis court makes it abundantly clear that, if the officer had not been in uniform, the accident would not have been compensable.
The issue to be addressed is whether the City of Rahway and its water consumers should properly be assessed with the costs incurred by virtue of an assault upon a water department employee after he had arrived home at the end of his regular shift because he was on call. Is the status of being on call so intimately related with the work that injuries suffered during that period should be compensable? Such accidents do not occur on the employer’s premises. The employee is free to do what he pleases except that his movements may be limited in the sense that he must be reachable. Other than that limitation, he is not in any wise under the control or supervision of the employer. The majority’s argument that having Paige on call for emergencies was substantially beneficial to the employer so as to distinguish this case from others in which the employee may be on call for emergencies, 74 N. J. at 180-182, is at best a difference in degree and not a distinction.
*184Our research, and that of counsel have produced no case holding compensability when the employee’s work relationship was exclusively his on call status. Compensability has been awarded by some courts when the employee was en route to the job or returning after having been called out. The majority has cited such cases. Robinson v. Levy, 20 N. J. Misc. 444 (Workmen’s Comp. Bur. 1942) (permanent nurse for child who was employed and paid on the basis of 24 hours per day injured when returning from her home where she had laundered some uniforms); Juna v. New York State Police, 40 App. Div. 2d 742, 336 N. Y. S. 2d 738 (1972) (state police officer killed in automobile accident on returning to duty while within geographic area of his troop and who under police regulations was required to take prompt and proper action in all police matters); Donnell v. Waccabuc Country Club, 29 App. Div. 2d 1022, 289 N. Y. S. 2d 534 (1968) (beach guard who was subject to call and being paid injured while returning home). There are numerous cases, on the other hand, which have held that the going and coming rule applies to an on call employee; Foster v. Massey, 132 U. S. App. D. C. 213, 407 F. 2d 343 (D. C. Cir. 1968); Russellville Gas Co. v. Duggar, 47 Ala. App. 661, 260 So. 2d 393 (Civ. App. 1971); Thornton v. Texarkana Cotton Oil Corp., 219 Ark. 650, 243 S. W. 2d 940 (1951); 1 Larson, The Law of Workmen’s Compensation § 24.23 (1972).
The on call status should not per se create compensability. The employee is not on duty at that time. He is not performing any services for the employer. He is engaged in whatever personal endeavors he desires and is not being directed by or under the control of the employer. If, as the majority states, the going and coming rule remains viable to exclude routine daily trips to or from the employee’s fixed place of business at the end of the day, Briggs v. American Biltrite, 74 N. J. at 189-190, then the employee Paige’s trip home after his regularly scheduled work at the Rahway Water Department plant cannot encompass any com*185pensable injury during that trip. His on call status during that trip was irrelevant. Presumably he could not be called until he arrived at home. Furthermore, even upon reaching home, the fact that the employer had a right to call him, which it had not exercised, is not sufficient in and of itself to warrant imposing costs of his injury on the City of Rah-way Water Department and its consumers.
I would affirm.
Justice Clifford joins in this opinion.
For reversal — Chief Justice Hughes and Justices Mountain, Sullivan, Pashman and Handler — 5.
For affirmance — Justice Clifford and Schreiber — 3.