Court Opinion

ID: 9584867
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:53:25.631282+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:19:32.279579
License: Public Domain

Judge WHICHARD
dissenting.
To permit compensation to employees injured subsequent to leaving their dwelling to go to work, and prior to returning thereto, would be a legitimate policy decision. Employees so situated can with reason be regarded as furthering the interests of the employer, in that such travel is a necessary incident to the employment itself.
As the majority opinion notes, however, it is well-established in this jurisdiction that ordinarily an injury suffered by an employee while going to and from work is not an injury arising out of and in the course of the employment. See the cases cited by the majority, and the following: Humphrey v. Laundry, 251 N.C. 47, 110 S.E. 2d 467 (1959); Harris v. Farrell, Inc., 31 N.C. App. 204, 229 S.E. 2d 45 (1976); Franklin v. Board of Education, 29 N.C. App. 491, 224 S.E. 2d 657 (1976); Williams v. Board of Education, 1 N.C. App. 89, 160 S.E. 2d 102 (1968); 38 N.C.L. Rev. 508, 511 (1960). In my view that principle is dispositive here, and application of the exceptions relied on by the majority is inappropriate.
The majority opinion correctly states that “[p]laintiff was injured near her car because the obligations of her employment, the special errand, required her to be at that place when the accident occurred.” That was equally the case, however, with every other employee who approached a car for the purpose of going to work that morning. Generally, to be compensable, an injury cannot arise from “a hazard common to others.” Bryan v. T. A. Loving Co., 222 N.C. 724, 728, 24 S.E. 2d 751, 754 (1943). “The causitive danger must be peculiar to the work and not common to the neighborhood.” Id. Such is not the case here. Plaintiff was simply subjected to the identical hazard encountered by every other employee who went to work on the morning in question within the area affected by the same weather pattern.
Consider the following hypothetical: Plaintiff and her next door neighbor are employed as co-managers of the hospitality shop. They are thus employed in the identical capacity by the *40same employer. It is plaintiff’s duty to go by the bakery on the way to work one morning, and the neighbor’s duty the next, on a continuously alternating basis. On the morning in question plaintiff and the neighbor, while proceeding simultaneously toward their respective cars to depart, plaintiff for the bakery, and the neighbor directly for the hospital, fall simultaneously on the ice and sustain identical injuries. Under the majority’s reasoning, plaintiff recovers, and the neighbor does not. I find neither logic nor justice in such a result.
I would thus hold that until plaintiff departed from her accustomed route of travel to the place of employment, she remained in the ordinary process of going to work; and her “special errand” to the bakery had not commenced. I would also find the dual purpose doctrine inapplicable on the ground that when plaintiff was injured she had not entered the scope and course of the employment for any business purpose.
My vote is to affirm.