Are you covered under workers’ compensation going to and from your place of work? Are you covered by workers’ compensation if you are traveling for work? These two issues often arise when a worker has been injured on the job.
Generally an employee is not entitled to compensation for injuries while going to or from the place of employment.
However, best cialis there are important exceptions to the general rule.
The law recognizes an exception when the employee is attending or traveling to or from an event if the activity benefits the employer’s business in some way.
Where travel is involved, viagra sales this mutual benefit exception is known as the “dual purpose doctrine” because the work of the employee creates a necessity for travel even though the employee may be serving some purpose of his own. If there is deviation from the route for a personal purpose, benefits may be denied.
The issues of whether a worker is covered under workers’ compensation while traveling on business is related. The issue will be: was the worker exposed to a hazard or risk to which workers would have been equally exposed outside of and unrelated to the employment in normal nonemployment life? The fact pattern of one case denying compensation was that a traveling employee was sitting on a hotel patio, he stood up, twisted his ankle and fell. Compensation was denied. There was no evidence that there was any defect on the patio.
But if a worker falls in an open hole on the sidewalk in India (i.e., happened to my husband), the claim will be covered.
Travel between two offices or from a work site to another work site generally will be covered. Most of the cases center on whether the employee was headed back to an office or work site or whether the employee was headed home or on a personal errand at the time of the injury.
Contact Margaret E. Dean, Attorney at Law, 816-753-3100 if you have been injured on the job.