July 8, 2019

The District of Columbia Court of Appeals vacated a decision by the D.C. Department of Employment Service's Compensation Review Board that a woman who was injured at work while on a break was not eligible for compensation because her injuries did not arise out of her employment. Gaines v. D. C. Dep't of Emp't Servs., No. 17-AA-1403, 2019 D.C. App. LEXIS 246 (June 27, 2019).

The injured worker was a rail station manager named Lemakia Gaines. She was scheduled to work a swing shift for the transit authority. After her first shift ended, she had a two-hour unpaid break before her second shift started. Her plan was to take her break and eat a meal in the employee-only auxiliary room, accessible only with a master key that was issued to station managers and employees.

Gaines was still outfitted in her uniform and took an escalator to the street to get a soda. On the way back down the escalator to the break room, she slipped and fell down several steps. She suffered contusions, abrasions, and sprains to her left shoulder and arm, spine and neck. Soon after, she filed a workers' compensation claim for medical expenses and disability benefits. The employer- railroad testified that Gaines was off duty at the time of her injury.

An administrative law judge granted the claim, but a review board reversed the decision determining that the injury had occurred while Gaines was on a long break between shifts. The District of Columbia Court of Appeals vacated that decision.

The court determined that the main issue was whether her injury was distinctly associated with her employment. The court held that the injury was not "thoroughly disconnected" from the workplace, pointing out that Gaines was riding a transit authority escalator at the time of her fall, also that it had been raining and the escalator was wet at the time the injury occurred. The court used the "but for" analysis and found that, assuming that Gaines was not on duty at the time of the injury, the injury nonetheless arose "in the course of employment" because the injury would not have occurred if her job had not required her to go to that station in order to work a shift. The transit authority argued that she did not have to use the escalator to enter the station. The court found that construing the phrase "arising out of employment" so narrowly would undoubtedly lead to "absurd consequences" because many workplace injuries occur in circumstances for which the employer did not dictate specifically the location and timing of the employee. The court found that Gaines injury arose in the course of her employment, and her plan to eat in the break room constituted an action that was "reasonably related to or incidental" to the employment, and that her injury was compensable.

 

Editors Note: The but-for analysis discussed above is a commonly used test in both tort law and criminal law to determine actual causation. The test asks "but for the existence of x, would y have occurred?" If yes, then x is an actual cause of y.

In this case, but for her employment with the rail station, Gaines would not have been heading to the employee-only break room for her break, and would not have been using the escalator where her injury occurred.