Court Opinion

ID: 9694321
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 17:37:03.129655+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:59.322997
License: Public Domain

Schreiber, J.,
dissenting. The Court has twisted the statutory compensability criteria under the Workers’ Compensation Act to include an accident which occurred after the end of the working day, on a public street, when the employee was en route from his privately rented room to meet a co-worker who was to drive him to Asbury Park. Reliance is not placed on the special errand concept, the Court properly finding that the employer had not given instructions for *165the trip, but simply on the assertion that the employee’s trip to his rented room “was related to, if not compelled by, his employment . . .” 74 N. J. 155, 162.
This factual conclusion is said to be justified on the basis that the employee, Lawrence E. Watson, went to his room to obtain his soiled work clothes which needed to be cleaned and the “accident occurred before he departed from work by his usual means of transportation.” Id. However, the Judge of Workers’ Compensation concluded that Watson’s journey to his living quarters was for personal reasons, a conclusion which the Appellate Division found was supported by sufficient credible evidence in the record. Further, the judge noted, as indeed he had to under the undisputed evidence, that the accident occurred after the employee had arrived home and then left to meet his friend.
The record contains abundant support for these findings. Watson had rented and occupied a room several blocks from the Nassau Inn in Princeton, where he worked as a waiter. He arranged his time off to coincide with that of a co-worker, Robert Miller, who each Thursday afternoon would drive Watson to his Asbury Park home. It was Watson’s custom to take a travelling bag of soiled clothing to Asbury Park for laundering.
The two would rendezvous at Miller’s automobile located in the parking lot across the street from the Nassau Inn. If Watson completed his workday first, generally he would walk to his room, fetch the laundry and return to the lot. If Miller was through first, he would drive Watson to his room where the laundry would be picked up and they would continue on to Asbury Park.
On Thursday, November 1, 1973, Watson finished before Miller, went to his room, obtained the soiled clothing and, while walking on the public sidewalk toward the parking lot, was injured by a falling tree. This accident came to pass after Watson had reached his home and while he was walking toward the parking lot across the street from his employer’s place of business.
*166The Court has this day redefined the going and coming rule to exclude from compensability those accidents which occur during “routine daily trips to or from an employee’s fixed place of business at specified hours at the beginning or end of the day.” Briggs v. American Biltrite, 74 N. J. 185, 190. Watson’s trip to his rented room clearly falls within that limited definition. The accident occurred after Watson had already arrived at his Princeton home and left. He had completed his “coming” from work. Since recovery is not permissible under the Court’s new going and coming rule, it follows a fortiori that the injury cannot be compensable under these circumstances.
The majority’s reliance on Hammond v. The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., 56 N. J. 7 (1970) and Levine v. Haddon Hall Hotel, 66 N. J. 415 (1975) is misplaced. In Hammond the accident occurred between the employer’s premises and a parking lot it furnished. Although the petitioner in that case did not travel the entire distance between the two areas because a co-employee was to drive from the lot and pick her up, the petitioner was on the same route used by other employees to walk to the parking lot when the accident occurred.
In Levine, the employee, after disembarking from a public bus, was struck by a truck while crossing a street en route to the employer’s premises. The Court reasoned that, since the employer’s parking facilities for employees were one or two blocks away and accidents happening between the two locations would be compensable, the accident which occurred within that geographical span was also compensable.
Neither Hammond nor Levine is supportive here. A crucial fact in those eases was the place of the occurrence, the situs being between the employer’s premises and the parldng area1 which it furnished. Neither decision countenances accidents happening after arrival at the employee’s home. Al*167though not formally eliminating the going and coming rule, the Court here has added a new dimension — coverage for accidents which materialize after arriving home.
The accident occurred outside the employee’s regular work hours, not on the employer’s premises, and not during a period when he was under the control or direction of the employer. The attenuated relationship with the employment, namely that the employee was proceeding to take soiled clothes for cleaning to Asbury Park, is far too remote to conclude that costs of an accident during this personal trip should be imposed on the employer, Nassau Inn, and its patrons. See Wyatt v. Metropolitan Maintenance Co., 74 N. J. 167, 172 (1977) (dissenting opinion).
I would affirm.
Justice Clifford joins in this opinion.
For reversal — Chief Justice Hughes and Justices Mountain, Sullivan, Pashman and Handler — S.
For affirmance — Justices Clifford and Schreiber — -2.

But see Levine, 66 N. J. at 420, 423 (dissenting opinion).