Law, Business and Society 11th Edition by Tony McAdams

Exercise 18

Chief Justice Barker
I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND
From October 1998 until September 3, 2004, the plaintiff, Kristina Wait, worked as Senior Director of Health Initiative and Strategic Planning for the American Cancer Society ("ACS"). Because of the lack of office space at its Nashville, Tennessee facilities, the ACS allowed the plaintiff to work from her East Nashville home. The plaintiff converted a spare bedroom of her home into an office, and the ACS furnished the necessary office equipment, including a printer, a facsimile machine, a dedicated business telephone line, and a budgetto purchase office supplies. In all respects, the plaintiff's home office functioned as her work place. Not only did the plaintiff perform her daily work for the ACS at her home office, the plaintiff's supervisor and co-workers attended meetings at the office in her house. There is no evidence in the record with respect to any designated hours or conditions of the plaintiff's employment, nature of her work space, or other work rules. Significantly, the plaintiff's work for the ACS did not require her to open her house to the public. In fact, during working hours the plaintiff locked the outside doors of her home and activated an alarm system for her protection. Unfortunately, however, on September 3, 2004, the plaintiff opened her door to a neighbor, Nathaniel Sawyers ("Sawyers"), who brutally assaulted and severely injured the plaintiff.
The plaintiff met Sawyers in May or early June of 2004 at a neighborhood cookout she attended with her husband. Thereafter, Sawyers, who lived approximately one block from the plaintiff's home, came to the plaintiff's home for a short social visit on a weekend day in late June. The plaintiff and her husband spoke with Sawyers for approximately five minutes, and then Sawyers left. In August, Sawyers came to the plaintiff's home on a weekday for a social visit; however, the plaintiff was preparing to leave her home office for a job-related television interview. The plaintiff told Sawyers that she was going to a business meeting. When Sawyers replied that he was on his way to a job interview in Nashville, the plaintiff allowed Sawyers to ride with her to his job interview.
On September 3,2004, the plaintiff was working alone at her home office. Around noon, the plaintiff was in her kitchen preparing her lunch when Sawyers knocked on her door. The plaintiff answered and invited Sawyers into the house, and he stayed for a short time and then left. However, a moment later, Sawyers returned, telling the plaintiff that he had left his keys in her kitchen. When the plaintiff turned away from the door, Sawyers followed her inside and brutally assaulted the plaintiff without provocation or explanation, beating the plaintiff until she lost consciousness. As a result of this assault, the plaintiff suffered severe injuries, including head trauma, a severed ear, several broken bones, stab wounds, strangulation injuries, and permanent nerve damage to the left side of her body.
On December 12, 2005, the plaintiff filed a complaint seeking workers' compensation benefits from Travelers Indemnity Company of Illinois, the insurer of the ACS. (The plaintiff did not name the ACS as a defendant.) The plaintiff alleged that the she was entitled to workers' compensation benefits for the injuries she sustained in the assault because the assault arose out of and occurred in the course of her employment with the
ACS. The defendant... [denied] that the injuries arose out of or occurred in the course of the plaintiff's employment.
Following discovery, the defendant filed a motion for summary judgment, which the chancery court granted. The chancery court concluded that the. plaintiff's injuries did not arise out of or occur in the course of her employment with the ACS. Additionally, the chancery court noted that Sawyers "was not [at the plaintiff's home office] on any kind of business with the [ACS], nor was he really there on any kind of business with the [p]laintiff."
The plaintiff appealed. We accepted review.
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III. ANALYSIS
A. The Workers' Compensation Act and Telecommuting
The Workers' Compensation Act ("Act"), codified at Tennessee Code Annotated sections 50-6-101 to -801 (2005), is a legislatively created quid pro quo system where an injured worker forfeits any potential common law rights for recovery against his or her employer in return for a system that provides compensation completely independent of any fault on the part of the employer. The Act should be liberally construed in favor of compensation and any doubts should be resolved in the employee's favor. However, this liberal construction requirement does not authorize courts to amend, alter, or extend its provisions beyond its obvious meaning.
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This case requires us to apply the Act to a new and growing trend in the labor and employment market: telecommuting. An employee telecommutes when he or she takes advantage of electronic mail, internet, facsimile machines and other techno-logical advancements to work from home or a place other than the traditional work site. In 2006, approximately thirty-four million American workers telecommuted to some degree.
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Not surprisingly, however, this innovative working arrangement has resulted in an issue of first impression: whether the injuries a telecommuter sustains as a result of an assault at her home arise out of and occur in the course of her employment.
B. Did the plaintiff's injuries occur in the course of her employment
It is well settled in Tennessee, and in many other jurisdictions, that for an injury to be compensable under the Act, it must both "arise out of" and occur "in the course of" employment. Although both of these statutory requirements seek to ensure a connection between the employment and the injuries for which benefits are being sought, they are not synonymous. As such, the "arising out of" requirement refers to cause or origin; whereas, "in the course of" denotes the time, place, and circumstances of the injury. Furthermore, we have consistently abstained from adopting any particular judicial test, doctrine, formula, or label that purports to "clearly define the line between accidents and injuries which arise out of and in the course of employment [and] those which do not[.]"
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In this case, we will consider the second requirement first. An injury occurs in the course of employment "when it takes place within the period of the employment, at a place where the employee reasonably may be, and while the employee is fulfilling work duties or engaged in doing something incidental thereto."
Generally, injuries sustained during personal breaks are compensable.
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[T]he defendant here argues that the plaintiff's injuries are not compensable because the plaintiff was not "fulfilling a work duty" in admitting Sawyers into her kitchen. It is true that the plaintiff suffered her injuries while preparing her lunch in the kitchen of her home; however, the plaintiff's work site was located within her home. Under these circumstances, the plaintiff's kitchen was comparable to the kitchens and break rooms that employers routinely provide at traditional work sites. Moreover, the ACS was aware of and implicitly approved of the plaintiff's work site. Her supervisor and co-workers had attended meetings at the plaintiff's home office. It is reasonable to conclude that the ACS realized that the plaintiff would take personal breaks during the course of her working day….
Thus, after careful review, we conclude that the injuries the plaintiff sustained while on her lunch break, occurred during the course of the plaintiffs employment. The plaintiff was assaulted at a place where her employer could reasonably expect her to be. The ACS permitted the plaintiff to work from home for approximately four years. The plaintiff's supervisor and co-workers regularly came to her home office for meetings. The record does not suggest that the ACS restricted the plaintiff's activities during working hours or prohibited her from taking personal breaks. The facts do not show that the plaintiff was engaging in any prohibited conduct or was violating any company policy by preparing lunch in her kitchen. It is reasonable to conclude that the ACS would have anticipated that the plaintiff would take a lunch break at her home just as employees do at traditional work sites. Importantly, Sawyer's initial visit was very brief and spontaneous. Unless instructed otherwise by the employer, an employee working from a home office who answers a knock at her door and briefly admits an acquaintance into her home does not necessarily depart so far from her work duties so as to remove her from the course of her employment. This is not to say, however, that situations may never arise where more prolonged or planned social visits might well remove the employee from the course of the employment.
In arguing that the plaintiff's injury did not occur "in the course of" her employment, the defendant maintains that the plaintiff's decision to admit Sawyers into her home was not a work duty. However, this argument misses the mark on this requirement because the Act does not explicitly state that the employee's actions must benefit the employer; it only requires that the injuries occur in "the course of" the employment. Because the plaintiff was engaged in a permissible personal break incidental to her employment, we reject the defendant's narrow interpretation of the Act. The question is not whether the plaintiff's injuries occurred while she was performing a duty owed to the ACS, but rather whether the time, place, and circumstances demonstrate that the injuries occurred while the plaintiff was engaged in an activity incidental to her employment. Accordingly, we hold that the plaintiff suffered her injuries during the course of her employment and disagree with the chancery court's conclusion on this important point.
C. Did the plaintiff's injuries arise out of her employment
Even though the plaintiff's injuries occurred "in the course of" her employment, we nevertheless hold that they did not "arise out of" her job duties with the ACS. The phrase "arising out of" requires that a causal connection exist between the employment conditions and the resulting injury. With respect to whether an assault arises out of employment, we have previously delineated assaults into three general classifications:
(1) assaults with an "inherent connection" to employment such as disputes over performance, pay or termination;
(2) assaults stemming from "inherently private" disputes imported into the employment setting from the claimant's domestic or private life and not exacerbated by the employment; and (3) assaults resulting from a "neutral force" such as random assaults on employees by individuals outside the employment relationship.
When an assault has an "inherent connection" to the employment it is compensable. On the other hand, assaults originating from "inherently private" disputes and imported into the work place are not compensable. However, whether "neutral assaults" are compensable turns on the "facts and circumstances of the employment."
The assault in this case is best described as a "neutral assault." In granting the defendant's motion for summary judgment, the chancery court commented: " [T]here's certainly not any evidence that this person who committed the assault was part of the working employment relationship and was not there on any kind of business related to the [ACS] or really any business with the employee." We agree with the chancery court's conclusions. A "neutral force" assault is one that is "neither personal to the claimant nor distinctly associated with the employment."
The categories focus on what catalyst spurred the assault, i.e., was it a dispute arising from a work-related duty, was it a dispute arising from a personal matter, or was it unexplained or irrational An assault that is spurred by neither a catalyst inherently connected to the employment nor stemming from an inherently private dispute is most aptly labeled as a "neutral force" assault. Here, the undisputed facts clearly show that the assault had neither an inherent connection with the employment, nor did it stem from a personal dispute between Sawyers and the plaintiff. Therefore, we must focus our attention on the facts and circumstances of the plaintiff's employment and its relationship to the injuries sustained by the plaintiff.
Generally, for an injury to "arise out of" employment, it must emanate from a peculiar danger or risk inherent to the nature of the employment. However, in limited circumstances, where the employment involves "indiscriminate exposure to the general public," the "street risk" doctrine may supply the required causal connection between the employment and the injury.
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[T]his Court held that the "street risk" doctrine satisfied the causal connection requirement where the employee was assaulted by unknown assailants as he removed paperwork from his employer's van while it was parked at his residence. We carefully limited application of the street risk doctrine to "workers whose employment exposes them to the hazards of the street, or who are assaulted under circumstances that fairly suggest they were singled out for attack because of their association with their employer"
Unlike our previous cases in which the facts supported application of the "street risk" doctrine to provide the necessary causal connection, the facts here do not establish that the plaintiff's employment exposed her to a street hazard or that she was singled out for her association with her employer. There is nothing to indicate that she was targeted because of her association with her employer or that she was charged with safeguarding her employer's property. Additionally, the plaintiff was not advancing the interests of the ACS when she allowed Sawyers into her kitchen, and her employment with the ACS did not impose any duty upon the plaintiff to admit Sawyers to her home.
The plaintiff argues that had it not been for her employment arrangement, she would not have been at home to suffer these attacks. However, we have never held that any and every assault which occurs at the work site arises out of employment. Additionally, although Sawyers knew from a previous visit that the plaintiff was home during the day, there is nothing in the record which indicates that there was a causal connection between the plaintiff's employment and the assault.
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Affirmed.
Why did the court conclude that the "street risk" doctrine did not apply to Wait's injuries