Baskin v. Community Towel Service

• Decision Date: 30 April 1971
• Citation: 466 S.W.2d 456
• Parties: A. J. BASKIN and Eugene Foster, Appellants, v. COMMUNITY TOWEL SERVICE et al., Appellees.
• Court: United States State Supreme Court — District of Kentucky

Page 456

466 S.W.2d 456

A. J. BASKIN and Eugene Foster, Appellants, v. COMMUNITY TOWEL SERVICE et al., Appellees.

Court of Appeals of Kentucky.

April 30, 1971.

Joe G. Leibson, Louisville, for appellants.

Armer H. Mahan, Louisville, for appellees.

REED, Judge.

In this workmen's compensation case we are asked to review the current applicability of the 'going and coming' rule to the claim of an employee who was employed on a fixed-time basis at a fixed place of work and who was injured while returning from lunch to the premises of his employer.

Appellants, Baskin and Foster, were employees of Community Towel Service. They were hourly-rate production workers who checked in and out on a time clock. They were not paid while on their lunch period. On the day they were injured they checked out and left the employer's premises to go to lunch. They drove in Foster's automobile to a restaurant several blocks away. Upon the return trip to work they were both injured when the automobile in which they were riding on a public street collided with another automobile at an intersection; the place of the accident was about a half blcok from the employer's premises.

Baskin and Foster filed claims for workmen's compensation benefits for the disabilities resulting from the injuries sustained in the automobile accident. The Workmen's Compensation Board found that the accident in which appellants were injured did not occur within the limits of either time or place of employment; the board's decision was that the accident occurred outside the course of employment, and the claims of the employees were dismissed. When the injured employees appealed to circuit court, the board's decision was upheld and their claims were again rejected. They finally appealed to this court. We, however, are of the opinion that the circuit court's judgment, which upheld the board's disposition of the claims, is correct and should be affirmed.

The appellants concede that the decision rejecting their claims was based upon precedent that was applicable. The case of Heffren v. American Medicinal Spirits Corporation, 272 Ky. 588, 114 S.W.2d 1115 (1938), squarely decided that the death of an employee resulting from injuries sustained in an accident which occurred while the employee was riding on the employer's truck for the purpose of going to lunch at a restaurant a few blocks away from the employer's premises was not compensable. The rationale was that at the time of the accident the employee and employer owed each other no duty and the employee was not performing a service for the employer.

Appellants argue that, although the Heffren case has not been specifically overruled, its basic holding has been disapproved in principle by subsequent decisions of this court. Appellants urge that because this court approved the 'positional rick' analysis of Professor Larson in Corken v. Corken Steel Products, Inc., Ky., 385 S.W.2d 949 (1964), and in cases decided subsequent to that decision such as Kaycee Coal Company v. Short, Ky.,450 S.W.2d 262 (1970), the Heffren case no longer represents the prevailing view concerning compensability in the situation presented by the instant case. The positional-risk approach applies to employees whose work assignment causes them to be exposed to the injury for which compensation is...