Court Opinion

ID: 9671018
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:29:35.946641+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:07.750070
License: Public Domain

MILES, Special Justice
(dissenting).
It is with some misgivings that I venture to disagree with the majority opinion in the above case; yet, I have been unable to reconcile my conclusions with those expressed by the author of the majority opinion.
Generally, an employee is not in a com-pensable status until he has reached his station or place of employment, ready to begin his employer’s activities. Similarly, an employee who is injured after completing his employer’s activities is not entitled *139to such compensation, although still on the employer’s premises, unless his case comes within the exception contemplated by the cases cited in the majority opinion.
The case of Travelers Indemnity Co. v. Charvis, 221 Tenn. 593, 428 S.W.2d 797, takes a more strict approach to the question before us and in that case the circumstances appear to be more favorable to a recovery than those of the case at bar. Also see James v. Sanders Manufacturing Co., 203 Tenn. 274, 310 S.W.2d 466. In McKinney v. Hardwick Clothes, Inc., 217 Tenn. 457, 398 S.W.2d 265, this court held that the icy conditions there involved were not a special hazard. In James v. Sanders Manufacturing Company, supra, this court held that metal covers on sidewalks were not special hazards as contemplated by the exception to the rule in McKinney v. Hardwick Clothes, Inc., supra. In Bennett v. Vanderbilt University, 198 Tenn. 1, 277 S.W.2d 386, recovery was denied because the injured employee was not using a course of travel required by the employer for egress and ingress. On the contrary, the record in the case at bar reveals that the employee, by his own admission, was taking a short cut to the exit gate; thus, he was apparently not using the conventional route. It is established by the record that this gate was accessible to the employee from three other exits from the plant and there is no indication that the course of travel from these three exits to the gate were inherently dangerous.
Moreover, the Chancellor concluded, apparently, that the course of travel voluntarily chosen by the employee was not inherently dangerous. This would appear to be a conclusion of fact by which this court is bound.
The circumstances of the case at bar are clearly distinguishable from those on which the case of Mallette v. Mercury, 204 Tenn. 438, 321 S.W.2d 816, wherein the employee had no other course of travel (or “escape route”) available to him.