Court Opinion

ID: 9705825
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:22:41.02342+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:16.317618
License: Public Domain

DeBRULER, Justice,
dissenting.
Several separate forays into this case have left me with the view that the majority of the First District was correct when it concluded that this employee's injuries must be deemed to have arisen out of and in the course of her employment. In O'Dell v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company (1977), 173 Ind.App. 106, 362 N.E.2d 862, an employee was killed in a collision in a company parking lot after punching out. That death was deemed to have arisen out of and in the course of employment. In United States Steel Corporation v. Brown 91968), 142 Ind.App. 18, 231 N.E.2d 839, an employee had clocked out and had reached the intersection of a company road with a public road when she stepped into the company road to accept a ride from a fellow employee and was struck by an entering car. That injury also qualified the injured employee for workmen's compensation.
In the case on appeal, the time element is qualifying. The injury occurred moments after the employee clocked out and was in the process of leaving work. Unlike the majority in its opinion, I also find that the place element is also qualifying. Here the employer had parts of its plant on both sides of the street. The street itself was public enough, but there were entrances and exists to the plant on both sides of the street. There was a traffic control device there which restrained traffic on both the public street and the company entrances and exits. The intersection and the devices channeled employee traffic to that location and provided a safe zone for it. Partial control of the devices was exercised by employer. The employee here was injured while walking in this zone to reach her car which she had parked at the curb on the public street, adjacent to the zone. The fact that the injury was at the hands of a non-employee is not disqualifying. Prater v. Indiana Briquetting Corporation (1969), 253 Ind. 83, 251 N.E.2d 810. And I furthermore can detect no disqualifying force to the facts that she parked on the public street rather than a company parking lot and that she punched out at one point in the plant rather than another. I would reverse the Board.