Mazzone v. Connecticut Transit Co.

• Decision Date: 13 May 1997
• Docket Number: No. 15599,15599
• Citation: 694 A.2d 1230,240 Conn. 788
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: Louis MAZZONE, v. CONNECTICUT TRANSIT COMPANY.

Page 1230

694 A.2d 1230

240 Conn. 788

Louis MAZZONE, v. CONNECTICUT TRANSIT COMPANY.

No. 15599.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued March 21, 1997.

Decided May 13, 1997.

Francis X. Drapeau, Rockville, for the appellant (plaintiff).

John M. Walsh, Jr., New Haven, for the appellee (defendant).

Before CALLAHAN, C.J., and BERDON, KATZ, PALMER and PETERS, JJ.

OPINION

PETERS, Justice.

The principal issue in this appeal is the compensability, under the Workers' Compensation Act (act), ¹ of an injury to an employee that occurred on an employer's premises during an unpaid lunch break. The claimant, Louis Mazzone, appealed from a decision of the compensation review board (review board) that had affirmed the decision of the workers' compensation commissioner (commissioner) denying the claimant's application for workers' compensation benefits. We transferred the claimant's appeal from the Appellate Court to this court pursuant to Practice Book § 4023 and General Statutes § 51-199(c). We reverse the decision of the review board and remand the case for further evidentiary proceedings.

The commissioner found the following facts, which are not disputed. The claimant is employed by the defendant, the Connecticut Transit Company, as a heavy duty mechanic. At the time of his injury, the claimant was assigned to work the day shift and was allotted, as part of that shift, an unpaid thirty-five minute lunch period, extending from 11:55 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. During this lunch period, the claimant was required to "punch out" on the time clock. Although the defendant provided a small lunchroom for its employees, the claimant and several of his coworkers usually chose to eat their lunches in unoccupied, out of service buses parked on the defendant's premises. The defendant was aware of this practice. ²

During his lunch break on the day of his injury, the claimant and his coworkers were eating their lunches in one such out of service bus. After inadvertently spilling milk, the claimant attempted to exit the bus in order to obtain a paper towel. While he was descending the rear steps of the bus, he fell to the pavement and was injured. As a result of these injuries, the claimant submitted a claim for workers' compensation benefits. See General Statutes § 31-294c (a) (establishing procedure for submission of claim).

Following an evidentiary hearing, the commissioner determined that the claimant's injuries were not compensable under the act. In so ruling, the commissioner drew two critical conclusions from the facts found: first, that, at the time of his injury, the claimant "was off the time clock and free to leave" and, therefore, not within the period of employment; and second, that the claimant "was not doing anything while on his lunch break in furtherance of the employer's business or incidental to it." ³ The claimant appealed from the commissioner's decision to the review board; see General Statutes § 31-301; which, on the basis of the facts found by the commissioner, affirmed the commissioner's decision. In its written decision, the review board restated the commissioner's key conclusions and determined that those conclusions were not contrary to the law establishing eligibility for workers' compensation. See McNamara v. Hamden, 176 Conn. 547, 550-51, 398 A.2d 1161 (1978). This appeal followed.

On appeal, without challenging the factual findings made by the commissioner, the parties dispute the propriety of the review board's legal conclusion that the claimant had failed to establish a compensable injury. A close examination of the record reveals that, in accordance with the applicable law of compensation eligibility, this broad compensability issue turns on the resolution of three narrower questions: (1) whether the claimant was within the period of his employment during the unpaid lunch break taken on the defendant's premises; (2) whether the claimant, by choosing to eat lunch on an out of service bus, was in a place in which he reasonably was entitled to have been; and (3) whether the claimant, in eating lunch, was engaged in an activity incidental to his employment. See id. We conclude that, as a matter of law, questions one and three must be answered in the affirmative and, consequently, reverse the decision of the review board. Because, however, the answer to question two depends on a question of fact with respect to which the findings of the commissioner are not sufficiently clear, we remand this matter for further evidentiary proceedings.

Our standard of review in workers' compensation cases is well established. "The conclusions drawn by [the commissioner] from the facts found must stand unless they result from an incorrect application of the law to the subordinate facts or from an inference illegally or unreasonably drawn from them." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Besade v. Interstate Security Services, 212 Conn. 441, 449, 562 A.2d 1086 (1989). Although a claimant has a statutory right to appeal an adverse decision to the review board, the review board's scope of review is limited. Six v. Thomas O'Connor & Co., 235 Conn. 790, 798-99, 669 A.2d 1214 (1996) (review board does not conduct de novo hearing). It "may take additional material evidence ... only if it is shown to its satisfaction that good reasons exist as to why the evidence was not presented to the commissioner. Otherwise, it is obliged to hear the appeal on the record and 'not retry the facts.' " Fair v. People's Savings Bank, 207 Conn. 535, 539, 542 A.2d 1118 (1988); see also General Statutes § 31-301(b) (describing scope of review).

As is the standard of review, the law governing eligibility for workers' compensation is also well established. "It is an axiom of [workers'] compensation law that awards are determined by a two-part test. The [claimant] has the burden of proving that the injury claimed arose out of the employment and occurred in the course of the employment. There must be a conjunction of [these] two requirements ... to permit compensation." (Emphasis added; internal quotation marks omitted.) McNamara v. Hamden, supra, 176 Conn. at 550, 398 A.2d 1161. The former requirement relates to the origin and cause of the accident, while the latter requirement "relates to the time, place and circumstances of the accident." Id.

In this case, as in McNamara, "it appears that the parties, the commissioner, and the [review board] have implicitly treated the injury sustained as one 'arising out of' the employment, and their focus on this appeal has been on the 'in the course of' employment aspect of the test." Id. Although the parties repeatedly recite both parts of the test in support of their respective arguments, their unelaborated references to the "arising out of" language are merely incidental to the issue that lies at the crux of their dispute, and at the heart of the commissioner's and the board's decisions, namely, whether the claimant was "in the course of his employment" at the time of his injury. "Thus, we will confine our discussion and review to that element in deciding this case." Id.

In order to establish that his injury occurred in the course of employment, the claimant has the burden of proving that the accident giving rise to the injury took place "(a) within the period of the employment; (b) at a place [he] may reasonably [have been]; and (c) while [he was] reasonably fulfilling the duties of the employment or doing something incidental to it." Id., at 550-51, 398 A.2d 1161; see also Spatafore v. Yale University, 239 Conn. 408, 418, 684 A.2d 1155 (1996); 1 A. Larson & L. Larson, Workmen's Compensation (1996) § 14.00, p. 4-1. These three parts of the required proof of the "in the course of employment" test correspond respectively, to the "time, place and circumstances of the accident." See McNamara v. Hamden, supra, 176 Conn. at 550, 398 A.2d 1161.

In this case, the commissioner and the review board concluded that the claimant had failed to satisfy the first part of this test because his accident had taken place while he had been "on an unpaid lunch break." They also concluded that the claimant had failed to satisfy the third part because, at the time of his accident, he had been eating lunch and, therefore, was "not doing anything ... incidental to" his employment. We disagree, as a matter of law, with both of these conclusions.

With respect to the time requirement portion of the "in the course of employment" test, we previously have held that "[t]emporary suspension of work by an employee for a permitted rest period, or lunch hour, or for satisfying the wants of nature ... have not been generally held sufficient to break the continuity of the employment." Vitas v. Grace Hospital Society, 107 Conn. 512, 515, 141 A. 649 (1928). Contrary to the position of the defendant, it is not dispositive that the claimant was officially "off the clock" and "on his own time" at the moment of his injury. Where, as here, a lunchtime injury takes place on the employer's premises, that injury may be said to have occurred "in the course of employment, even though the [lunch] interval is technically outside the regular hours of employment in the sense that the worker receives no pay for that time and is in no degree under the control of the employer, being free to go where he pleases." 1A A. Larson & L. Larson, supra, § 21.21(a), p. 5-6. Under these circumstances, an employee is as much within the period of employment as was the employee in McNamara who, while playing a game of ping-pong, off the clock, five minutes prior to the work day, suffered a compensable injury. McNamara v. Hamden, supra, 176 Conn. at 551, 398 A.2d 1161 ("[t]he exact time [of injury] is not significant" for purposes of compensation, as long as injury takes place on premises and in close temporal proximity to work day); see also Hughes v. American Brass Co., 141 Conn. 231, 234, 104 A.2d 896 (1954) (injuries coming and going to work may be within period of...