Mcdaniel v. Helmerich & Payne Int'l Drilling Co..

• Decision Date: 05 November 2010
• Docket Number: 2081120.
• Citation: 61 So.3d 1091
• Court: Alabama Court of Civil Appeals
• Parties: Michael Chad McDANIELv.HELMERICH & PAYNE INTERNATIONAL DRILLING COMPANY.

61 So.3d 1091

Michael Chad McDANIEL

v.HELMERICH & PAYNE INTERNATIONAL DRILLING COMPANY.

2081120.

Court of Civil Appeals of Alabama.

July 30, 2010.Rehearing Denied Nov. 5, 2010.

Desmond V. Tobias, Mobile, for appellant.Reggie Copeland, Jr., and Nicholas F. Morisani of Adams and Reese LLP, Mobile, for appellee.MOORE, Judge.

Michael Chad McDaniel (“the employee”) appeals from a summary judgment entered by the Mobile Circuit Court (“the trial court”) in favor of Helmerich & Payne International Drilling Company (“the employer”) on his workers' compensation claim. We reverse the summary judgment and remand the case for further proceedings.

The employee sustained personal injuries as the result of a motor-vehicle accident occurring on a Mobile County road on January 10, 2008, at approximately 5:50 a.m. The trial court entered a summary judgment in favor of the employer on the ground that the employer had proven that there was no genuine dispute that the employee's accident did not arise out of and in the course of the employee's employment with the employer. Specifically, the trial court determined that the evidence presented by the parties in support of and in opposition to the employer's motion for a summary judgment established, without dispute, that the motor-vehicle accident occurred while the employee was traveling on his way to a worksite before the workday had commenced. Under the “going and coming rule,” accidents occurring while a worker is traveling on a public road while going to or coming from work generally fall outside the course of the employment. See Turner v. Drummond Co., 349 So.2d 598, 603 (Ala.Civ.App.1977). The trial court further found that the employee had failed to present substantial evidence in support of his argument that one or more of the exceptions to the going and coming rule applied. See Barnett v. Britling Cafeteria Co., 225 Ala. 462, 143 So. 813 (1932) (holding that employee injured while in “zone of danger” created by employment would be considered in the course of the employment while coming to work); Young v. Mutual Sav. Life Ins. Co., 541 So.2d 24 (Ala.Civ.App.1989) (treating a traveling employee as within the course of the employment at all times while in his or her prescribed territory, except when engaged in a purely personal errand); and Partin v. Alabama Power Co., 615 So.2d 616 (Ala.Civ.App.1992) (holding that on-call employee enters the course of the employment when responding to a specific request by employer to report for duty).¹ On appeal, the employee maintains that the trial court erred as to both conclusions.

The evidence filed in support of the employer's motion for a summary judgment indicated that, on January 9, 2008, the employee, who resided in Louisiana, traveled to Mobile County to assist in “rigging down” an oil rig located in Creola that was to be later reassembled for a project in Chunchula. After the end of the workday, the employee retired to a bunk in a crew trailer owned and maintained by the employer, which the employer had provided as an accommodation to its workers and which had been moved from the Creola worksite to the new Chunchula worksite on January 9, 2008. The employee awoke the next morning, left the crew trailer, got into his personal vehicle, and began traveling to report to the Creola worksite, where he was scheduled to begin work later that morning. The accident occurred during that journey.

The countervailing evidence presented by the employee indicated that he had been assigned a bunk in the crew trailer as part of the employer's ordinary requirement that workers use the crew trailers when working on site and that the employer usually positioned those trailers on the site where the workers were scheduled to work the next day so that the workers could start working almost immediately upon leaving the trailers. On the morning of January 10, 2008, a supervisor awakened the employee at 5:00 a.m. and ordered him to report to a mandatory safety meeting, which took place in a supervisor's trailer on the Chunchula worksite not long thereafter.² The employer paid additional compensation to its workers to attend all safety meetings, which usually lasted about 15 or 20 minutes at the start of each workday, so the employee maintained that his workday had begun upon the commencement of that meeting. During that meeting, the employee was advised to use precaution when traveling to the Creola worksite. The record indicates that it was a rainy and foggy morning and that the route from the Chunchula worksite to the Creola worksite took the employee across an unmarked dirt road. The employee's vehicle slid when he attempted to stop at a stop sign while traveling to the Creola worksite in his personal vehicle, resulting in the employee's vehicle colliding with an oncoming tractor-trailer.

The evidence reveals a dispute between the parties regarding whether the employee was required to stay in the crew trailer on the night of January 9, 2008, and whether his workday began with a safety meeting conducted at the Chunchula worksite and continued throughout the trip from the Chunchula worksite to the Creola worksite. If so, the employee would not have been “going” to work when he departed the Chunchula worksite but, based on our caselaw, would have already started working so that his trip and any hazards of injury confronted during that trip would arise out of and in the course of the employment.

In order to be compensable, injuries from a motor-vehicle accident occurring on a public road must arise out of and in the course of the employment. See Kewish v. Alabama Home Builders Self Insurers Fund, 664 So.2d 917, 922 (Ala.Civ.App.1995). An employee injured while traveling on a public roadway on his or her way to work ordinarily is not entitled to compensation because the accident does not arise out of and in the course of the employment. See Hughes v. Decatur Gen. Hosp., 514 So.2d 935 (Ala.1987). However, if the injury results from an accident during the workday as part of a journey not only contemplated, but required, by the employer, any accident occurring during that journey is...