Court Opinion

ID: 9661304
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 22:34:55.999146+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:27.070858
License: Public Domain

Otis, Justice
(dissenting).
In my opinion, Goff is entirely distinguishable. There, the employer furnished the employees a rented parking lot across from the employees’ place of business, and although he discouraged employees from jaywalking, the employer did not take effective measures to prevent it. In Goff we held the parking lot was part *442of the working premises where employees could be expected to begin and end their day’s work. By no stretch of the imagination can the Capitol mall be regarded as part of the working premises for employees of the Centennial Building. They have no greater privilege to use that area than any non-state employee such as those employed at Sears Roebuck a block away. Had the employee been injured while, walking to the Vocational School for lunch, her status as an employee would not have been any different, but she would have been denied benefits.
In my opinion, the majority is now affording health and accident insurance to a state employee simply because she had the misfortune of being injured while jaywalking on her own time, off the premises of her employer, headed for a public area of her own choosing. This I submit was not an activity which under any construction of the statute was performed in the course of her employment with the State of Minnesota.