Jobsites should be kept safe, secure and non-hazardous to limit the risks of accidents and injuries. (Credit: Adobe Stock)
Employees are generally not entitled to workers’ compensation if they are injured going to or coming from their workplace.
However, injuries sustained during what is called “reasonable ingress or egress” can trigger an exception that allows for workers’ compensation benefits in certain cases, depending on when and where the injury occurs.
Consider Michael: He likes to beat rush-hour traffic, so he gets to work 30 minutes before his shift starts. He heads to the breakroom, microwaves a breakfast burrito, and waits around until it is time to clock in. Then one morning, he did not notice spilled coffee on the floor. He slipped, fell, and broke his wrist while walking toward the timeclock in the breakroom a few minutes before his shift started.
This article explores some of the legal factors to consider when determining whether Michael and two other hypothetical employees — Ashley, who broke her wrist on a break, and Joshua, who broke his wrist helping a coworker after hours — could receive workers’ compensation. Employers would be wise to understand when employees could receive these benefits, since a greater number of at-work injuries and accidents leads to higher workers’ compensation insurance premiums.
What's the precedent?
Typically, if an employee’s injury occurs on the way to or from work on the employer’s premises within a reasonable time from starting or stopping work, the employee will be eligible to receive workers’ compensation. According to the law in many states, employees should have a reasonable time to reach their employers’ properties before work and to leave after work ends. In Georgia, where I practice, this precedent has existed for at least 100 years. And in 2020, the Georgia Supreme Court upheld, and even broadened, the reasonable ingress/egress exception to include cases of ingress and egress during scheduled breaks.
Although it is well-established that an exception exists for reasonable ingress and egress, there are still some gray areas when considering whether employee activities before and after the workday meet the exception and should therefore be covered by workers’ compensation.
For example, no specific amount of time has been established for an ingress/egress injury to be deemed compensable. Georgia courts have found compensability in cases in which an employee was injured 15 minutes after work ended and 30 minutes before work started. But a century ago, the court determined that an injury occurring two hours before work started was an unreasonable amount of time for ingress.
Getting back to Michael’s case, it is likely that his injury would be found to have occurred during a reasonable period of ingress as it happened only minutes before the start of his shift and he was walking toward the timeclock on the employer’s premises. So this injury would probably be deemed compensable.
A trip downstairs
Let’s look at another hypothetical employee, Ashley, who works on the second floor of an office building that has one set of stairs and an elevator. Ashley is entitled to a 60-minute lunch break at noon. She usually walks downstairs to her car, drives to her home nearby, eats lunch, and gets back to her workstation by 1 p.m.
Unfortunately, one day at 12:03 p.m., after she left her employer’s office and while she was walking in the shared stairwell of the office building, she tripped and fell down the stairs, injuring her wrist.
Will workers’ compensation cover her injury?
Ashley’s accident appears to comply with the precedent authorizing workers’ compensation for accidents during breaks, and it happened at a reasonable time to trigger compensation.
The fact that the accident happened in a shared area of the office building that was not specifically owned by her employer does not necessarily get the employer off the hook. It has been held that the shared areas found in office buildings, building complexes, and shopping centers may be considered the employment premises if the way the employee enters or leaves the building is the only means of ingress or egress to work, or if it is one of two routes available. As such, Ashley’s wrist injury would most likely be covered by workers’ compensation.
Heavy buckets of ice
Now let’s consider Joshua, who is a waiter at a casual restaurant. His dinner shift ended at 10 p.m. He agreed to meet a friend for drinks at the restaurant’s bar at 11:30 p.m. Joshua did not mind waiting, as he enjoyed chatting with the bartenders.
Around 11 p.m., the bartenders were running out of ice, and Joshua decided to fetch the three large buckets of ice they needed for the refill. Because he is a waiter, he was not fully familiar with this bartending task, but he found the large buckets in the kitchen freezer. Unfortunately, he did not know there was a wheeled cart to use in transporting the heavy buckets. Lugging them by hand, he spilled ice, slipped, fell, and broke his wrist.
Although Joshua got hurt doing work for the benefit of his employer at his workplace, he was not completing any of his own job duties, this occurred at least an hour after he clocked out, and the only reason he was still on the employer’s premises in the first place was to meet a friend. Therefore, it is unlikely his injuries would be covered by workers’ compensation due to the timing of the injury, as well as his personal reasons for being on the employer’s premises at the time of injury.
Practical takeaways
Both employers and employees benefit from documenting how an employee’s accident or injury occurred as soon as possible, especially when and where it happened and why the employee was there at the time. If there is a question of compensability related to reasonable ingress/egress, it would be beneficial for both parties to retain legal counsel.
Moreover, it helps everyone for employment premises to be kept safe, secure, and non-hazardous to limit the risks of accidents and injuries. Fewer injuries for the workers is obviously better for everyone, and that will mean fewer workers’ compensation claims against the employer.
Caley Pitts, an associate attorney in Swift Currie’s Atlanta office, focuses her practice on defending employers and insurance companies in workers’ compensation claims throughout the state of Georgia. Reach her by sending an email to caley.pitts@swiftcurrie.com.
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