Court Opinion

ID: 9647942
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:56:08.673397+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:54.761766
License: Public Domain

FLAHERTY, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent. The majority holds that when an employee is dispatched to one of a number of possible job sites by his employer, the employee is eligible for workmen’s compensation benefits when he is injured en route to the job. This is not, has never been, and should not be the law.
The general rule, as correctly expressed by the majority, is that if an injury is sustained while an employee is going to or coming from work, the injury is not compensable. An exception to this rule is that the employee may be compensated for such injury if his employment contract provides for transportation to and from work; if he has no fixed place of work; if he is on a special mission for the employer; or if he was furthering the business of the employer. Citing Setley v. Workmen’s Compensation Appeal Board, 69 Pa.Commwlth.Ct. 241, 451 A.2d 10 (1982), the majority *289determines that the claimant in this case had no fixed place of work and was, therefore, eligible for workmen’s compensation benefits for injuries sustained in an accident going to work.
The Setley case itself, however, cites Davis v. Workmen’s Compensation Appeal Board, 41 Pa. Commonwealth Ct. 262, 398 A.2d 1105 (1979) as authority for its articulation of the “going and coming rule.” In Davis the employee was a pharmacist who worked for a supermarket in Reading. As part of Davis’s employment contract, he was required as well to work at other stores operated by his employer in Allentown and Bethlehem. Davis was killed in an auto accident while returning from the Bethlehem store to his home in Reading and his wife applied for worker’s compensation benefits. Although Commonwealth Court acknowledged the “going and coming” rule, it denied benefits on the grounds that his injuries were not suffered in the course of his employment and he did not fall within any of the exceptions to the “going and coming rule,” including the fixed place of work exception.
The present case is indistinguishable from Davis. Here an employee was dispatched to one of several possible work sites and was injured on the way to the job. That the employee was sent to one job site rather than another does not mean that the employee had no fixed place of work within the meaning of the exception to the “going and coming” rule. The exception to the rule, rather, concerns employees who are moved from one site to another after they have already begun to work at an initial site. The decision of Commonwealth Court should be affirmed and the claim denied.
ZAPPALA, J., joins this dissenting opinion.