Court Opinion

ID: 9735148
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 18:03:53.358698+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:55.770300
License: Public Domain

Amestoy, C J.,
dissenting. By ignoring the relevant factual findings of the Commissioner of Labor and Industry in this case, the majority’s opinion exposes employers and insurers to workers’ compensation claims for recreational injuries incurred by employees. The rational response to such exposure will be to eliminate from an employee’s compensation any benefit (e.g., health club membership; golf, ski, or swim passes, etc.) that could conceivably be characterized as an “inducement to attract employees” under the majority’s open-ended test. Because I believe that the unpredictability prompted by the majority’s reasoning is neither consistent with the remedial purpose of the workers’ compensation statute nor necessary when *385applicable law is applied to the facts of this case, I respectfully dissent.
I do agree with the majority that “[t]he relevant facts in this case are . . . largely undisputed . . . .” 170 Vt. at 383, 751 A.2d at 767. Indeed, it is the majority’s inexplicable inattention to the most salient facts that lies at the root of my disagreement with its rationale. The Commissioner specifically found that despite its job title “the ability to ski was not a job requirement [of the “ski bum” position] and non-skiers had held the job in the past.” Whatever the claimant’s subjective “hope” that he could “get a job that would enable him to ski,” the objective fact is that it was not necessary for the Gables to offer a ski pass to induce applicants to accept employment. Employer testified that, in the past, the Gables had employed persons who had accepted the “ski bum” position without taking the offered ski pass and without being offered alternative compensation. Nor do the facts as found by the Commissioner support the inference that an offer of a ski pass was necessary to induce the claimant to apply for employment. Indeed, the Commissioner found that the claimant was unaware that the Gables had advertised a job opening when he applied for a position. Without a sufficient factual basis to support a finding that the ski pass was an inducement, it cannot be concluded that employer gained a benefit from the claimant’s off-the-job recreational activity.
The majority’s reliance on Dorsch v. Industrial Commission, 523 P.2d 458, 460 (Colo. 1974), is similarly flawed. First, the employee in Dorsch, unlike claimant here, was injured on the premises of his employer’s ski resort. Second, unlike the Gables’ “ski bum” position, which the Commissioner found had been filled by nonskiers as well as skiers, the hearing officer in Dorsch specifically found that the ski pass was an incentive to attract employees to the employer’s ski area. Third, the court in Dorsch determined that offering a ski pass benefited the employer because it attracted prospective employees to odd hour and remote area employment.
Even assuming that claimant would not have accepted employment without inclusion of the ski pass, there must be a showing that the inducement benefitted employer. See Byrd v. Stackhouse Sheet Metal Works, 451 S.E.2d 405, 407 (S.C. Ct. App. 1994) (gas money as inducement to employment not a basis of compensation without benefit to employer); Berry v. Colonial Furniture Co., 60 S.E.2d 97, 100 (N.C. 1950) (death resulting from fishing trip offered as inducement to employment in place of health insurance not compensable *386because trip not directly or indirectly in furtherance of employer’s business); Brooks v. New York State Dep’t of Correction Matteawan State Hosp., 273 N.Y.S.2d 1001, 1002 (App. Div. 1966) (existence of low cost residency on employer premises not sufficient inducement to employment to award compensation because residency benefitted only employee).
At the hearing claimant apparently recognized the weakness of a claim that predicated eligibility for workers’ compensation benefits on the attenuated link between the “perk” of a ski pass and a recreational skiing injury. Much of claimant’s evidence went to the issue of whether employer required claimant to perform job-related duties while skiing (e.g., mingle with Gables guests or report ski conditions). The Commissioner found that claimant had “no responsibilities whatsoever to the Gables while he was on the mountain.” The record discloses ample evidence for this as well as each of the Commissioner’s other factual findings. The majority correctly notes that we can overrule such factual findings only “where those findings have no evidentiary support in the record.” Coburn v. Frank Dodge & Sons, 165 Vt. 529, 533, 687 A.2d 465, 467-68 (1996).
We are left, therefore, with the “benefit of inducement” theory ably advanced by claimant at oral argument. If I thought that the only effect of the majority’s opinion would be to make the seriously injured claimant eligible for workers’ compensation benefits, I would be far less troubled by the result. However, the ramifications of the majority’s decision will extend beyond this case. The likely increase in cost to employers for workers’ compensation coverage would be justified if today’s decision advanced the remedial purpose of the workers’ compensation law — to liberally provide coverage for employees injured in the course of their employment. But even a liberal reading of the act’s purpose cannot transform a recreational ski injury into an injury arising in the course of employment. In its good faith effort to extend the reach of workers’ compensation coverage, I believe an unintended consequence of the majority’s decision will be the diminishment of recreational benefits provided by employers to employees. In any event, employers who offer ski passes to employees will be as rare as the rope tow. I am authorized to state that Justice Skoglund joins me in this dissent.