Court Opinion

ID: 9571719
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:34:33.783934+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:30:50.877010
License: Public Domain

Petrie, J.
(dissenting) — My disagreement with the majority stems from a basic disagreement with what the law of this case is or should be. The essential issue involves the precise time at which Lake, having deviated from his course of employment, reentered that employment. The trial court held that, at the time the accident occurred, Lake was not yet "close" enough to the business establishment he was to clean.3 The majority perpetuates this vague test by resort to Restatement (Second) of Agency § 228(1) (b) (1958) which declares, in pertinent part, that conduct is within the scope of employment if it is substantially within the authorized "space limits" of the worker's employment.
*833If that is the test, then I would hold that Lake was within the course of his employment at the time of the accident simply because his employer failed to limit his method and route of travel in order to complete his night of employment. See Foote v. Grant, 55 Wn.2d 797, 803, 350 P.2d 870 (1960), where the court summarized its holding
that if Wernegreen [the deviating driver] had his own choice of routes to Seattle, despite the specific designation in his agreement [of employment], there might have been a justification of his choice of the much longer coast route . . .
Nevertheless, I choose not to perpetuate the poverty of the rule as stated by the majority. Instead, I would replace the vague spatial limits rule with a more exacting rule as follows:
[W]here an employee is required to operate a vehicle on the streets or highway, and is injured after having made a temporary departure from the service of his employer, for matters of a personal nature reasonably to be undertaken and not expressly forbidden, and such matters have been accomplished and the service of the employer again becomes the principle [sic] object of travel, and the street on which the accident happens is not more hazardous than any other route of travel, the employee may be said to be again within the course of his employment, notwithstanding the accident causing injury occurs before he has reached the point where, in the performance of his duty, he is required to be.
7 W. Schneider, Workmen’s Compensation § 1684, at 404 (1950).
Professor Larson states the reentry rule even more succinctly:
[W]ith a completed personal errand put behind, and a business destination remaining to be reached, there is the clearest kind of coverage: . . .
1 A. Larson, Workmen's Compensation § 19.25, at 4-300 to 4-301 (1982); and see cases cited therein. Lake had long since completed his "personal errand," and the same had been "put behind" before the accident occurred.
*834I would reverse the summary judgment and remand for trial.
Reconsideration denied April 4, 1984.
Review denied by Supreme Court June 8, 1984.

From the record before us, a jury could well find that, moments before the accident, on his way to the establishment he was directed to clean, Lake reached the main roadway which would take him directly to that establishment. Inadvertently, he made the wrong turn onto that road. Realizing his error, he attempted to make a U-turn and drove headlong into plaintiff's vehicle.