Court Opinion

ID: 9722612
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 09:41:54.11051+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:37.867335
License: Public Domain

SHOEMAKER, P. J.
I dissent. This petition was before us once before, at which time we denied it without comment. Upon petition for hearing by the Supreme Court, a hearing was granted and the Supreme Court thereafter ordered the matter back to us by issuing an alternative writ returnable before us and citing the following cases: State Comp. Ins. Fund v. Workmen’s Comp. App. Bd. (1967) 67 Cal.2d 925 [64 Cal.Rptr. 323, 434 P.2d 619]; Western Greyhound Lines v. Industrial Acc. Com. (1964) 225 Cal.App.2d 517 [37 Cal.Rptr. 580]; and Smith v. Workmen’s Comp. App. Bd. (1968) 69 Cal.2d 814 [73 Cal.Rptr. 253, 447 P.2d 365]—the first two cases involving the “personal comfort” doctrine, and in all of which the injuries were incurred during compensated time..
The majority opinion turns its back on the substantial evidence rule and works out a theory which extends the “personal comfort” doctrine far beyond any present authority. I cannot agree to this approach, not only because I am convinced that the facts do not warrant it but also because I believe that if any new extension is to be made, the Supreme Court should be the one to do so.
There is no dispute as to the facts: the employee had taken six hours off for her own affairs. She was paid therefor. There was a department rule that this time off could be made up during the one-hour lunch period at the rate of no more than 30 minutes during each such lunch hour. (It required no stipulation between the parties as the majority opinion would indicate in footnote 1.) The employee injured was the head of her division and, as disclosed by her counsel on argument before us, had the authority to set the time out df her lunch hour that would be applied as make-up time. In this case she stated that on this day she had decided that the time from 12:30 to 1 p.m. would be the time applied toward discharging her duty to work off one-half hour of the time she owed the company. She never reached that point because she was injured around 12:20 p.m., some five minutes after she left her office to get a sandwich at a shop located across the street from her office. Under these facts, I can see no possible application of the “personal comfort” doctrine. The employee had worked from 12 to 12:15 when she left to go for the sandwich; from other testimony we are told this *863had been done at other times. However, this does not enter into our situation except as a confusing factor, for it is clear that the purpose of the rule as to working off time owed was that the employee was not to forego the necessity of eating and other requirements, to the detriment of his health. In other words, for his own good he was not going to be permitted to miss a whole lunch hour to devote it to making up time—a portion of that hour period must be given to getting away from the job with its well-known beneficial effects (i.e., coffee breaks).
By her own testimony, the time from 12 to 12:15 p.m. was not to be compensated and she makes no claim therefor. My colleagues ignore this and argue that she could make up the time at any time during the hour, so, obligingly, as advocates on her behalf, they extend to her the first one-half hour of the lunch period as compensated time and thus arrive at the conclusion that she went across the street to get her sandwich and was injured at a time when the one-half hour had not expired and hence she is entitled to workmen’s compensation.
Is it not more logical, if we follow this route, and knowing that she could set her make-up time to suit herself during the lunch hour, to break it up as follows: the 15 minutes from 12 to 12:15 are applied to makeup, and are compensated time; then, since she must eat—and that is the primary purpose of the rule—she goes on the time allotted for lunch, for which she is not compensated, and then when she returns to her work she can, up to 15 more minutes, claim credit for make-up time.
This was a lunch time injury and I find nothing to remove it from the general rule that an employee on his way to or from a meal is performing a purely personal action; and since he is then rendering no service to his employer, an off-premises injury sustained in the course of such a trip is not compensable. The majority opinion abolishes this rule, with the result that it shifts to the employer the not inconsiderable risks which the employee incurs when he leaves the place of work and goes beyond the dominion and control of the employer, something the Legislature has not seen fit to do. (Arboleda v. Workmen’s Comp. App. Bd. (1967) 253 Cal.App.2d 481, 483 [61 Cal.Rptr. 505].)
I will accept the employee’s contention that she had a heavy workload, but I am also cognizant of the fact it was not so heavy that she was not permitted to take time off for her own personal reasons, as the evidence shows that in the preceding month she had taken personal time off and at the time in question had six hours to make up.
The case of Smith v. Workmen’s Comp. App. Bd., supra, to which our attention was directed, in my opinion has no application to this proceeding. *864The Smith case (a four-to-three decision) was one in which a social worker was required to use his own car in his employment. The court found that the “employer’s requirement that the worker furnish a vehicle of transportation on the job curtails the application of the going and coming exclusion.” The injury was not sustained during the lunch hour but, rather, on the way to work.
The requirement by the employer in our case was that the employee must, out of the hour set aside for lunch, take at least one-half thereof for the purpose of such period and the only means by which she could use the remaining one-half of the hour in her work was when she was making up time that she had theretofore taken off for her personal affairs.
I can find nothing in this case to warrant any departure from the rule that factual determinations of the board must be upheld if, based upon the entire record, such findings are supported by the substantial evidence. (LaVesque v. Workmen’s Comp. App. Bd. (1970) 1 Cal.3d 627, 637 [83 Cal.Rptr. 208, 463 P.2d 432].) The testimony of petitioner and the concessions of her counsel supply the substantial evidence and the order of the board should be affirmed.
A petition for a rehearing was denied June 25, 1971, and the petition of respondent State Compensation Insurance Fund for a hearing by the Supreme Court was denied July 21, 1971.