Farmers Elevator Co., Kingsley v. Manning

• Decision Date: 19 December 1979
• Docket Number: No. 63045,63045
• Citation: 286 N.W.2d 174
• Parties: FARMERS ELEVATOR COMPANY, KINGSLEY, Iowa, Employer, and Farmers Elevator Mutual Insurance Company, Insurance Carrier, Appellants, v. Milo F. MANNING, Claimant, and Robert C. Landess, Iowa Industrial Commissioner, Appellees.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

Page 174

286 N.W.2d 174

FARMERS ELEVATOR COMPANY, KINGSLEY, Iowa, Employer, and Farmers Elevator Mutual Insurance Company, Insurance Carrier, Appellants, v. Milo F. MANNING, Claimant, and Robert C. Landess, Iowa Industrial Commissioner, Appellees.

No. 63045.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

Dec. 19, 1979.

James C. Huber of Jones, Hoffmann & Davison, Des Moines, for appellants.

Robert J. Dull of Dull Law Firm, LeMars, for appellee Manning.

Considered by LeGRAND, P. J., and REES, UHLENHOPP, HARRIS, and McGIVERIN, JJ.

UHLENHOPP, Justice.

The primary issue in this appeal is whether injuries of a workers' compensation claimant arose out of and in the course of his employment for Farmers Elevator Company.

The parties agree on the basic facts. Before claimant Milo F. Manning was injured he worked as a salesman for the Elevator. He sold Elevator products by making sales trips to farms in the Kingsley area. Among the commodities he sold was an animal health product manufactured by Supersweet Feeds.

On the night of June 25, 1975, claimant was injured on his way home from a dinner given for customers of Farmers Elevator who purchased a specified amount of the Supersweet product. Although the parties disagree as to who "sponsored" the event, they do not dispute that the Elevator purchased steaks for the dinner at the request of claimant and a representative of Supersweet, while Supersweet arranged for the building and furnished the drinks. The Elevator manager was present at the dinner. Many of the guests in attendance were customers of claimant whom he invited as he made his sales rounds. Although the Elevator did not expressly order claimant to attend the dinner, claimant testified he felt an obligation to the Elevator to do so. Consequently, rather than visit his hospitalized son as he had done on every one of the other nights that week, claimant arrived at the dinner early and helped prepare the meal and serve the guests. After everyone had eaten, claimant remained at the dinner two or three hours longer to converse with fellow employees and Elevator customers. On his way home from the dinner at approximately 1:00 a. m., claimant fell asleep at the wheel of his van. The vehicle left the road and he received serious injuries to his neck and back.

After claimant and the Elevator were unable to reach agreement regarding compensation for the injuries, claimant filed a petition for arbitration before the Iowa Industrial Commissioner. On February 24, 1978, following a hearing, a deputy commissioner found that claimant's injuries arose "out of and in the course of" his work and that as a result he was entitled to benefits and weekly disability payments pursuant to section 85.3 of the Code of 1979. The Elevator and its insurer exhausted their administrative remedies, and then petitioned for judicial review in district court. The court affirmed the decision. We will speak of the Elevator and its carrier collectively as the Elevator.

In this appeal from the district court's judgment, the Elevator contends that claimant should be denied compensation because his injuries did not arise out of or in the course of his employment. It also asserts that the agency's decision was not sufficiently certain regarding the disability basis to permit judicial review, that the Elevator did not receive adequate notice of claimant's injury, and that, in any event, interest should be computed on unpaid compensation from the date of the district court's judgment, "at the earliest."

In appeals of this kind pursuant to the Administrative Procedure Act, §§ 86.26, 17A.20, The Code, "we review the record in the manner specified in § 17A.19(7)." Hoffman v. Iowa Department of Transportation, 257 N.W.2d 22, 25 (Iowa 1977). "Our review is limited . . . to the record made before the hearing officer." Davenport Community School District v. Iowa Civil Rights Commission, 277 N.W.2d 907, 909 (Iowa 1979). We uphold agency fact findings which are supported by substantial evidence in the record made before the agency when that record is viewed as a whole. § 17A.19(8); Young Plumbing & Heating Co. v. Iowa Natural Resources Council, 276 N.W.2d 377, 383-84 (Iowa 1970).

I. "Out of and in the course of the employment." The Elevator offers several grounds in support of its contention that claimant's injury arose neither out of nor in the course of the employment.

The Elevator's basic argument is that claimant failed to establish he was performing any employment duties or engaging in any acts incidental to his employment while attending the dinner on the night in question. The Elevator asserts that additional factors operate to bar a finding that claimant was acting within the course of his employment on the night he was hurt. It alleges that the accident occurred while claimant was going home so as to call for application of the "coming and going" rule regarding employer liability, that claimant was intoxicated and his intoxication was a proximate cause of his injury, and that claimant's conduct in attempting to drive home while "in no condition" to do so constituted such an "unusual or rash act" as to prohibit compensation.

1. The Elevator's argument that claimant was not performing any employment duties on the night he was injured is apparently based in large part on the allegation that his presence at the dinner was not "required" by his employer within the meaning of section 85.61(6) of the Code. Paragraph 6 of the section provides that "(t)he words 'Personal injury arising out of and in the course of the employment ' shall include . . . injuries to those who are engaged . . . in places where their employer's business requires their presence and subjects them to dangers incident to the business.''

When faced on prior occasions with the argument that an injured employee's presence at the scene of an accident was not "required," this court has adopted a liberal interpretation of the "course of employment" criterion. We have thus said that

(a)n injury occurs in the course of the employment when it is within the period of employment at a place where the employee reasonably may be in performing his duties, and while he is fulfilling those duties or engaged in doing something incidental thereto. An injury in the course of employment embraces all injuries received while employed in furthering the employer's business and injuries received on the employer's premises, provided that the employee's presence must ordinarily be required at the place of the injury, or, if not so required, employee's departure from the usual place of employment must not amount to an abandonment of employment or be an act wholly foreign to his usual work. An employee does not cease to be in the course of his employment merely because he is not actually engaged in doing some specifically prescribed task, if, in the course of his employment, he does some act which he deems necessary for the benefit or interest of his employer.

Bushing v. Iowa Railway & Light Co., 208 Iowa 1010, 1018, 226 N.W. 719, 723 (1929) (citations omitted, emphasis added).

In applying the statutory forerunner of section 85.61(6) to injuries suffered by a salesman at a social event, this court looked to the purpose and nature of the event to determine if the employer's business "required" the salesman's presence. Linderman v. Cownie Furs, 234 Iowa 708, 710, 13 N.W.2d 677, 679 (construing § 421(6), The Code 1939). The test is whether the act is "in any manner dictated by the course of employment to further the employer's business." Id. In this regard the court has noted "the salesman's calling as one that demands somewhat special obligation." Id. at 713, 13 N.W.2d at 680. "A successful salesman must be a good listener as well as a good talker. He must be able to accept as well as give. He must be a grateful guest as well as a generous host." Fintzel v. Stoddard Tractor & Equipment Co., 219 Iowa 1263, 1267, 260 N.W. 725, 726 (1935). The court has therefore allowed compensation to a salesman who was shot while pheasant hunting with the son of a prospective customer, since "(t)he course of his employment . . . required that he enthusiastically and gratefully avail himself of this form of entertainment which the customer had so generously proffered" despite the absence of a specific order from his employer to join the hunting party. Id. at 1268, 260 N.W. at 727.

As a reasonable limitation on the scope of employment-related entertainment, "the authority of the particular employee to undertake entertainment or recreational activities on behalf of his employer must be genuine." 1A A. Larson, Workmen's Compensation § 22.21, at 5-82 (1978). Larson states that the factors relevant to a determination of the existence of such authority include the degree to which the recipient of the entertainment is in a position to make decisions that benefit the employer, whether authority was actually conferred on the employee to engage in the entertainment, and the extent to which the employer pays for the cost of the entertainment. Id. at 5-82 through 5-83.

This record contains sufficient evidence to support a finding that claimant's participation in the customer appreciation dinner was both beneficial to and authorized by the Elevator. Regarding the latter, the recipients of the dinner were customers of the Elevator and therefore in a position to make decisions of benefit to it. Moreover, the agency could reasonably conclude that Mr. Richardson, for the Elevator, authorized claimant's participation by agreeing to supply the steaks when asked to do so by claimant and a Supersweet representative. As to benefit derived by the Elevator as a result of claimant's participation in the dinner, most of the invitees were claimant's own customers and received their invitations from him while he traveled his sales route. At the dinner, claimant prepared the steaks supplied by the Elevator and served them to the guests, in addition to conversing...