Cox v. COASTAL PRODUCTS COMPANY, INC.

• Court: Supreme Judicial Court of Maine (US)
• Writing for the Court: CLIFFORD, J.
• Citation: 774 A.2d 347,2001 ME 100
• Decision Date: 02 July 2001
• Parties: Timothy COX v. COASTAL PRODUCTS COMPANY, INC.

774 A.2d 347
2001 ME 100

Timothy COX
v.
COASTAL PRODUCTS COMPANY, INC

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Argued: January 9, 2001.

Decided: July 2, 2001.

Alexander F. McCann, Esq., (orally), James J. MacAdam, Esq., MacAdam McCann, South Portland, for employee.

Troy M. McLain, Esq., (orally), MEMIC, Portland, for employer.

Panel: WATHEN, C.J., and CLIFFORD, RUDMAN, DANA, SAUFLEY, ALEXANDER, and CALKINS, JJ.

CLIFFORD, J.

[¶ 1] Coastal Products Company, Inc. appeals from the decision of a hearing officer of the Workers' Compensation

774 A.2d 348

Board awarding workers' compensation benefits to Timothy Cox for an injury sustained while driving a company vehicle. Coastal Products contends that the injury occurred during a nonwork-related deviation from employment and is therefore noncompensable. We disagree and affirm

[¶ 2] Coastal Products is located in Westbrook and manufactures and distributes bottled chemical cleaning products. Timothy Cox, age twenty-two at the time of the injury, was an employee of Coastal Products. Cox had received prior permission from Coastal Products to leave work early on the afternoon of June 8, 1998, to sign papers for the purchase of a vehicle for his personal use. Cox arranged for his father to pick him up at work at 2:30 P.M. and take him to the automobile dealership in Windham to sign the papers.

[¶ 3] On the afternoon of the June 8, Coastal Products received an order to deliver a five-gallon drum of chemical cleaner to Smiling Hill Farms. Mooney instructed Cox to make the delivery in the company pickup truck, and told Cox that he could then proceed in the company truck to Windham to sign for the purchase of his vehicle. Cox was instructed to return the pickup truck to Coastal Products after completing his personal errand, and to return to work for the remainder of the evening.

[¶ 4] Cox testified that had he not intended to purchase the car that afternoon, his supervisor, Michael Mooney, would have made the delivery and Cox would have remained at Coastal Products. Mooney testified, however, that, because it was an unusually busy day and because Cox was not qualified to do Mooney's job as supervisor of the plant, "it made sense" to send Cox to make the delivery. The company pickup truck was the personal vehicle of Coastal Product's owner, Herb Pressman. Mooney was unaware that Cox had driven the company truck on only one prior occasion, and that Pressman had become so alarmed at Cox's inability to drive the manual transmission vehicle that he had forbidden Cox from driving the truck again.

[¶ 5] Cox left Coastal Products in the pickup truck at 3:15 P.M. and made the delivery at Smiling Hill Farms at around 4:00 P.M. The Windham auto dealership is several miles from Coastal Products in the opposite direction from Smiling Hill Farms. Cox drove back to Westbrook on the same road that he had taken to Smiling Hill Farms, but, when in Westbrook, Cox turned away from Coastal Products and proceeded in the direction of the auto dealership in Windham.

[¶ 6] Cox was involved in a car accident shortly after leaving Westbrook and was seriously injured, suffering internal injuries and multiple broken bones. Cox filed petitions with the Workers' Compensation Board seeking incapacity benefits and payment of medical expenses.

[¶ 7] The Workers' Compensation Act provides compensation for injuries that "aris[e] out of and in the course of employment." 39-A M.R.S.A. § 201(1) (2001). In granting Cox's petitions, the hearing officer applied the "dual purpose" doctrine, whereby an employee's injury may be deemed work-related for purposes of subsection 201(1) if it occurs during a trip that serves both a personal and a business purpose. The hearing officer found, in part:

If Mr. Cox had been involved in the collision on his way to or back near the plant from making the delivery, the Board must assume that this case would not have required testimony. The only complicating fact is that Mr. Cox actually sustained the injury while he was engaged on personal business. But the fact that Mr. Cox was only allowed to engage in that personal business that

774 A.2d 349

day because he first made the delivery for the employer and the fact that the trip as a whole was authorized by the employer and required the use of the employer's vehicle, establish that the injury Mr. Cox sustained was compensable.

. . .

... The business aspect of the trip predominated; indeed, the personal aspect of the trip would never have taken place that day if [the employer] had not agreed with and endorsed Mr. Cox's suggestion that the latter undertake the delivery and then continue to do the personal part of the trip. Whether or not Mr. Cox signed the papers for his car that day, someone from the employer would have made the delivery that Mr. Cox himself made.

The hearing officer denied Coastal Products' motion for further findings of fact, and we granted its petition for appellate review pursuant to 39-A M.R.S.A. § 322 (2001).

[¶ 8] In Comeau v. Maine Coastal Servs., 449 A.2d 362 (Me.1982), we articulated a nonexclusive eight-factor work-relationship analysis applicable "when the fact pattern of a case does not fall snugly within the arising out of and in the course of employment requirement." Comeau, 449 A.2d at...