Court Opinion

ID: 9547481
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:47:54.532401+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:17:47.665070
License: Public Domain

LUCAS, J.
I respectfully dissent.
Applicant Price was injured outside the work premises, before working hours, while engaged in an act of personal convenience. Under such circumstances, his injuries were not compensable under the workers’ compensation laws.
The majority holds that all injuries that occur while awaiting entry to the employment premises are compensable. (Ante, pp. 565-566.) I fail to see how the act of awaiting entry before ordinary working hours reasonably may be deemed to arise “out of and in the course of the employment.” (Lab. Code, § 3600.) Moreover, I think it is anomalous that compensation must be granted to one, such as applicant, who is injured while attending his parked car, but is denied to an employee who has already left his car and is injured while walking toward his workplace. (General Ins. Co. v. Workers’ Comp. Appeals Bd. (Chairez) (1976) 16 Cal.3d 595, 598-600 [128 Cal.Rptr. 417, 546 P.2d 1361] [adopting the “premises line” test].) Surely, in neither case has the ordinary morning “commute” ended, for in neither case has the employee actually entered the work premises. This fact is even more apparent here, where the injury occurred before working hours had commenced.
Nor was any “special risk” created by the employment in this case which might make inapplicable the going and coming rule. Contrary to the majority’s characterization, applicant was not “forced” to wait in a place of danger such as the applicant in Parks v. Workers’ Comp. Appeals Bd. (1983) 33 Cal.3d 585 [190 Cal.Rptr. 158, 660 P.2d 382] (applicant injured while stuck in usual heavy school traffic outside workplace). There was no indication in the record that applicant herein was regularly subjected to any delay in work access or to any foreseeable risk of injury, or that any prior, similar accidents had ever taken place. In essence, applicant was injured while engaged in an act of personal convenience of no benefit to his em-
*572ployer, prior to his ordinary working hours. Workers’ compensation should not be available under those circumstances.
I would affirm the board’s decision denying benefits.