Court Opinion

ID: 9591539
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:04:56.056787+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:01:23.365695
License: Public Domain

Weaver, J.
(concurring in part and dissenting in part). I agree with the majority opinion that the standard under MCL 418.301(3); MSA 17.237(301)(3),1 is *728that “an employee does not suffer an injury that occurred in the course of his employment while traveling to work, when he was injured on a public street, not maintained by the employer, as he was walking from a private parking lot to the worksite.” Ante at 705.
However, I write separately because I would affirm the Court of Appeals reversal of the Worker’s Compensation Appeal Board’s decision to award plaintiff worker’s compensation benefits. I would not remand this case to the WCAC for further fact finding because the above standard articulated by the majority was appropriately applied by the Court of Appeals to the facts as stipulated by the parties. Therefore, there is no need to remand this case for further fact finding.
Furthermore, I would overrule Fischer v Lincoln Tool & Die Co, 37 Mich App 198; 194 NW2d 476 (1971), because that case conflicts with the principles set forth in the majority’s opinion, parts A through D, and with the majority’s standard. The Fischer Court awarded worker’s compensation benefits to an employee, who was injured while walking to work after parking her car on a public street. The Fischer Court considered the street to be part of the employer’s “premises,” as defined by the worker’s compensation statute, because the employer failed to provide parking and therefore, expected its employees to park on the public street. Id. at 202.
This determination by the Court of Appeals was appropriately and persuasively criticized in Tedford v Stouffer’s Northland Inn, 106 Mich App 493, 501-502; 308 NW2d 254 (1981), as follows:
The implicit trend in this manner of decision making is a steady dilution of legislative limitations on compensation. *729The Supreme Court has specifically disapproved of such judicial “reform” of the compensation act. [McClure v General Motors Corp (On Rehearing), 408 Mich 191, 204; 289 NW2d 631 (1980).] While the statutory coming-and-going rule does not directly limit coverage to on-premise injuries ... it must be remembered that the rule is an exception to the basic requirement that compensable injuries arise out of and in the course of the employment. [Id. at 502 (citations omitted).]
Fischer is an unnecessary expansion of the statutory coming-and-going rule of the worker’s compensation act because it extends liability to situations that the employer has neither created nor controls. Id. at 502, citing 1 Larson, Workmen’s Compensation Law, § 15.12, p 4-10. Because I agree with the majority’s articulation of the standard under MCL 418.301(3); MSA 17.237(301)(3),2 1 would overrule Fischer.

 MCL 418.301(3); MSA 17.237(301)(3) is the worker’s compensation statute’s going-and-coming provision, which provides in relevant part:
An employee going to or from his or her work, while on the premises where the employee’s work is to be performed, and within a reasonable time before and after liis or her working hours, is presumed to be in the course of his or her employment. Notwithstanding this presumption, an ipjury incurred in the pursuit of an activity the major purpose of which is social or recreational is not covered under this act.

 Ante at 705.