Court Opinion

ID: 9620277
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:40:30.615323+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:48.782833
License: Public Domain

Paul E. Danielson, Justice, concurring. I concur in the decision to affirm the Board’s decision, but would do so using the same rationale as the Board. As evidenced by its own representative’s testimony, Mamo is in the business of providing its clients transportation of the clients’ vehicles. Thus, its enterprise for which the service is performed is, in fact, transportation. While Mamo has four main offices from which it dispatches drivers to provide Mamo’s transportation service to its clients, it is my opinion that “all the places of business,” in this case, would encompass the roadways on which Mamo’s drivers travel. Nothing is unclear about the term “place of business.” Indeed, Black’s Law Dictionary defines the term as “[a] location in which one carries on a business.” Black’s Law Dictionary 1187 (8th ed. 2004). That differs from a business’s “principal place of business,” which is defined as “[t]he place of a corporation’s chief executive offices, which is typically viewed as the nerve center.” Id. Accordingly, the term “all the places of business” encompasses wherever the business’s services are performed. Here, “all the places of business” includes the roadways. In the instant case, the service being provided by Mamo, transportation, necessarily takes place on the roadways or airways. Transportation, by its nature, does not occur in one physical location or place of business. It simply is a different creature from the typical business venture. Indeed, a “place of business” determination will vary from case to case depending on the business in which the employer is engaged. Here, all the places of business includes the roadways, as found by the Board. See, e.g., Vermont Inst. of Cmty. Involvement v. Dep’t of Employment Sec., 140 Vt. 94, 436 A.2d 765 (1981) (observing that an employer’s place of business includes not only the location of its offices, but also the entire area in which it conducts business). Because there was substantial evidence to support the Board’s decision, I would affirm. Corbin, J., joins.