Court Opinion

ID: 9764361
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:19:32.704672+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:56.013479
License: Public Domain

Clifford, J.
dissenting. Once again the Court chips away at the going-and-coming rule, eroding it in one breath and vouchsafing it endurance in the next.' While the rule is accorded lip .service with the not very .comforting reassurance that it remains the law of this State, ante at 448, the fact is that this case moves us perceptibly beyond Paige v. City of Rahway, 74 N. J. 177.(1977), found by the majority to control today’s decision, ante at 445-446. And it nudges us closer yet to the abolition of the going-and-coming rule for which, I submit, no better substitute has yet been fashioned.
Paige eschewed the technique of focusing on “the particular factual setting surrounding” the incident (there an assault), 74 N. J. at 180, relying instead on “the nature of petitioner’s on call status [as] a sufficient basis for providing recovery.” Id. That status, in Paige, was such that there the petitioner’s obligation to his employer, after he had left his place of employment, was memorialized in specific and direct instructions requiring the employee in effect not to make a move without notifying the employer. He was “personally accountable” for the operation of the plant. So immediate and substantial was this accountability that the employer was relieved of the need to furnish an additional employee to supervise the shift during which petitioner was on call.
While I disagreed with the finding of compensability in Paige, even were I of a different view I would not find that ease controlling. Here the petitioner’s decedent, a manager in the respondent’s electro-data processing department, was “expected to report to work from 8:30 to 4:30 every day, five days a week,” in addition to which it was anticipated he would work overtime and respond to calls to return to the *453plant “when necessary.”1 The over time work and returns to the plant totalled about 50 occasions in two and a half years, or a little more frequently than once every three weeks for these combined extra efforts. While his work with Eedders was given priority, decedent also had a part-time job as a computer operator at McGraw-Hill on Saturdays and Sundays. When the accident occurred, he was on his way home on a weekday at his customary time in order to have dinner and fulfill his stated intention of watching a television program.
The entirely unstructured “on-call” status in this case is in sharp contrast to the precise constraints under which the petitioner in Paige was placed and the direct responsibility imposed on him. Decedent here labored under the same pressures as do most other lower or middle-level managerial employees. Erom time to time those pressures were translated into intrusions not uncommon to managers or, for that matter, countless other conscientious businessmen and professionals. The automobile accident which occurred on decedent’s journey home for an evening of relaxation lacks, under the circumstances, even the most tenuous of connections with his employment.
Eor these reasons, as well as those set forth in Justice Schreiber’s dissenting opinion in Paige, I would affirm the judgment below denying compensation.
Justice Schkeibek joins in this opinion.
*454• For reversal and remandment — Justices Mountain, Sullivan, Pashman and Handler — 4.
■ For affirmance — Justices Clifford and Schreiber — 2.

 There is no basis in the record for the majority’s assertions that (a) decedent’s “continued availability [was] essential to the operational efficiency of his employer’s business * * ante at 451, and (b) “Sabat’s ready accessibility to his subordinates for problem-solving purposes * * ■* presumably enabled Fedders to avoid the hiring of a person (or persons) of equivalent authority and expertise to supervise its computer operations beyond the conclusion of the regular workday.” Ante at 450. Each is entirely speculative, there being not one word of testimony which would give rise to eveti a logical inference supporting either proposition.