Injuries Covered By the Act

• Jurisdiction: Maryland

IV. INJURIES COVERED BY THE ACT

A. Compensability Requirements in General

The Act covers disability or death resulting from "an accidental personal injury' sustained by the employee that "arises out of and in the course of employment."⁷⁸ The quoted words constitute the crucial elements for determining compensability and have been the subject of innumerable Maryland cases. As the Court of Appeals lamented in the early case of Baltimore Dry Docks & Ship Building Co. v. Webster:⁷⁹

The few and seemingly simple words "arising out of and in the course of employment" have been the fruitful (or fruitless) source of a mass of decisions turning upon nice distinctions and supported by refinement so subtle as to leave the mind of the reader in a maze of confusion.

B. Accidental Personal Injury

In Harris v. Board of Education,⁸⁰ the Court of Appeals overruled a long line of previous decisions which had held that the term "accidental" required that an injury result from an unusual strain or exertion of the employee or an unusual condition in the employment. The court ruled that what must be accidental is the injury and not the activity giving rise to the injury, and that an injury is accidental as long as it was unexpected or unintended.⁸¹

The inability of the employee to identify with certainty the exact date of the accident does not bar a compensation claim.⁸²

C. Arising Out of and in the Course of Employment

1. Separate requirements

The words "arising out of" and "in the course of" employment as used in LAB. & EMPL. § 9-101(b) are not synonymous, and both of these requirements must be satisfied by the worker to bring the case within the Act's coverage.⁸³

However, the courts have also stated that the two requirements are not necessarily to be applied independently; they are both parts of a single test of work connection, and therefore deficiencies in the strength of one factor are sometimes allowed to be made up by the strength of the other.⁸⁴

2. Definition of terms

a. "In the course of" the employment

These words refer to the time, place, and circumstances under which an injury occurred. It is generally held that an injury arises "in the course of employment" when it occurs within the period of employment at a place where the employee reasonably may be in the performance of his duties and while he is fulfilling those duties or engaged in doing something incident thereto.⁸⁵

b. "Out of" the employment

An injury "arises out of" employment when, after consideration of all the facts and circumstances of the case, it is apparent to the rational mind that there was a causal connection between the conditions under which the work is required to be performed and the ensuing injury. The causative danger must be incidental to the nature of the business, and not independent of the relation of master and servant. If the injury can be seen to have followed as a natural incident of the work, and to have been contemplated by a reasonable person familiar with the situation as a result of the exposure occasioned by the nature of the employment, it may be said to have arisen out of the employment.⁸⁶

The courts have also applied a "positional risk" test to determine whether an accident arose out of the employment. Under this test, an injury arises out of the employment if it would not have occurred but for the fact that the employer's job required the employee to be in the place or position where he or she was injured.⁸⁷

D. Rules and Guidelines for Determining Compensability

Since certain fact situations arise repeatedly, the courts have developed "rules" (and numerous exceptions to these "rules") to be applied in deciding workers' compensation cases.

1. Going and coming rule

Because the hazards of the public streets are perils to which the public at large is exposed and such hazards are usually encountered by a worker at a time and place unrelated to the duty which the worker is employed to perform, it is generally held that an injury sustained while the worker is traveling to or from his or her place of employment is not compensable.⁸⁸ In the Pariser case, the rule was applied to deny compensation to an employee whose injury occurred when the worker was stepping across the sidewalk in front of the employer's premises, even though the worker had walked only seven feet from the employer's building line.

2. Exceptions to going and coming rule

However, there are a number of exceptions to this general rule that the practitioner should keep in mind:

a. Premises exception

If the injury takes place before the hour when work begins, but after the worker has arrived on the employer's premises, the injury may be compensable.⁸⁹

The premises include the parking lot of the building where the employer's business is located, even though the employer had no ownership interest or right of control over the parking lot, as long as the employees had unrestricted use of the lot and customarily used it.⁹⁰

b. Traveling on public street on direct route between two parts of the employer's premises or between work sites⁹¹

c. Special hazard exception (also known as the Proximity Rule)

Compensation is allowed for an injury when, under the special facts of the case, the employment itself involves peculiar and abnormal exposure to a common peril that is annexed as a risk incident to the employment (i.e., where the location of the plant is at a place so situated as to make the customary and only practicable way of immediate ingress and egress one of hazard that causes the injury).⁹²

The gravamen of the rule is not that the employee is in close proximity to his or her place of employment, but rather that by reason of such proximity the employee is subjected to danger peculiarly or to an abnormal degree, beyond that to which the general public is subjected.⁹³

The special hazard exception has not been applied to injuries occurring on public property, including streets and sidewalks.⁹⁴

d. Transportation paid, furnished, or required by employer

If transportation to or from work is furnished or paid for by the employer, the injury is compensable.⁹⁵

Even if the employee is injured while driving his or her own vehicle at his or her own expense, the injury is compensable if the employee is required as part of the job to bring the vehicle to use during the working day, or if the employer has an obligation to provide free transportation.⁹⁶

An injury is also compensable if it occurs while the employee is riding in a conveyance which is under the control of the employer and is incidental to the employment as a result of an express or implied agreement or by custom or continued practice, even though the employee paid for the cost of transportation and alternate means of transportation were available.⁹⁷

e. Special errands or missions

When an employee, having identifiable time and place limits on his or her employment, makes an off-premises journey which would not have been made except for the obligation of employment, the journey may be brought within the course of employment by the fact that the trouble and time of making the journey, or the special inconvenience, hazard, or urgency of making it, is itself sufficiently substantial to be viewed as an integral part of the service itself.⁹⁸

For example, an employee who is "on call" after regular working hours, and is injured while called into work, is entitled to compensation under this exception to the going and coming rule.⁹⁹

Special errands or missions may include a trip to or from a company-sponsored social event or a separate trip which is necessary in order to attend the social event.¹⁰⁰

However, if the employment requires that the trip be made on a regular basis, even though infrequently, it is not regarded as a special errand or mission.¹⁰¹

The mere fact that the employee was asked by the employer to begin work earlier or leave work later than usual is not sufficient to create a special errand or mission.¹⁰²

When the employee makes a special journey to the place of employment at the request of the employer, the employee is acting in the course of employment, even if the tasks that he or she expects to do are completely normal or regular in the context of his or her ordinary duties.¹⁰³

f. Dual purpose doctrine

An injury may be compensable if the trip to or from work served both a business and a personal purpose, provided that the trip involved the performance of a service for the employer which would have caused the trip to be taken by someone even if it had not coincided with the personal journey.¹⁰⁴

The mission for the employer must be the major factor, or at least a concurrent cause of the journey; if it was merely incidental to what the employee was doing for his or her own benefit, the injury is not compensable.¹⁰⁵

If the employee is injured while taking work home for his or her own convenience and the employer does not require work to be done at home, the injury is not compensable.¹⁰⁶

3. Deviations

If the employee has deviated from the course of employment so that the injury occurs at a place where his or her employment did not require him or her to be, the employee's injury is not compensable.¹⁰⁷ Similarly, if the employee deviates by exposing himself or herself to a hazard which is not required by his or her employment, the injury is not compensable even though it may have occurred on the employer's premises.¹⁰⁸ However, if the injury takes place after the deviation has ended and the employee has returned to the actual route or area where the employee would have been had he or she not deviated, then there is no increase in the risk and the injury is therefore compensable.¹⁰⁹

On the other hand, if the employee is on a purely personal journey and deviates from that journey to take a trip that served a business purpose, the course of the detour is within the course of employment.¹¹⁰

4. Employee's home as a work site

The employee's home may be regarded as a work site depending on:

a. The quantity

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