Montanaro v. Guild Metal Products, Inc.

• Decision Date: 06 April 1971
• Docket Number: No. 1122-A,1122-A
• Citation: Montanaro v. Guild Metal Products, Inc., 108 R.I. 362, 275 A.2d 634 (R.I. 1971)
• Parties: Beulah MONTANARO v. GUILD METAL PRODUCTS, INC. ppeal.
• Court: Rhode Island Supreme Court

Page 634

275 A.2d 634

108 R.I. 362

Beulah MONTANARO v. GUILD METAL PRODUCTS, INC.

No. 1122-Appeal.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

April 6, 1971.

DiMascolo & DiPetrillo, Anthony DiPetrillo, Leonard A. Kamaras, Providence, for petitioner.

Anderson & Kane, Charles H. Anderson, Providence, for respondent.

OPINION

JOSLIN, Justice.

The Workmen's Compensation Commission denied and dismissed an employee's original petition for compensation benefits on the ground that she failed to prove by a fair preponderance of the reasonable evidence that the injuries sustained, when she slipped on the ice and fell while she was entering her employer's premises, arose out of and in the course of her employment. The case is here on the employee's appeal.

The evidence is undisputed. The petitioner was a long-time employee of respondent. Although her workday did not commence until 8 a.m., she had during the three years preceding her fall customarily arrived at her place of employment at about 7 o'clock in the morning. She arrived early because she was driven to work by her husband whose workday with a different employer began at an earlier hour than hers, and she preferred riding with him to walking or using public transportation facilities. When she arrived at her employer's premises she followed a routine. First she put her handbag, thermos bottle and other personal articles near her work station; then for a period of 15-20 minutes she gathered materials which would be used in her day's work; and whatever time remained until the 7:55 a.m. checking-in time she spent in her immediate supervisor's office drinking coffee and talking with other early arriving employees. Both her habit of arriving early and what she customarily did after arrival and before the commencement of the workday were known and consented to by her employer.

On February 11, 1969, arriving early as usual, she slipped and fell on an icy step as she entered her employer's premises and sustained a disabling injury. Whether that injury was compensable turns on what legal effect is given to uncontradicted and unimpeached facts. Initially that was a legal question for the Commission and its resolution thereof, unlike its determination of factual controversies, is subject to review on appeal. Boullier v. Samsan Co., 100 R.I. 676, 679, 219 A.2d 133, 135; Sullivan v. State, 89 R.I. 119, 122-123, 151 A.2d 360, 362; Corry v. Commissioned Officers' Mess (Open), 78 R.I. 264, 267, 81 A.2d 689, 691.

The facts are those of a typical 'going-and-coming case.' In that kind of case an employee's right to relief does not always hinge on whether he was injured on the premises or during his regular working hours, but on whether the peculiar facts and circumstances of the particular case establish a causal conncetion or a link beween the injury and the employment. Peters v. Bristol Mfg. Corp., 94 R.I. 255, 179 A.2d 853; Tromba v. Harwood Mfg. Co., 94 R.I. 3, 177 A.2d 186. And the existence of the causal relationship depends upon

'* * * whether the injury occurred within the period of employment at a place where the employee might reasonably have been and while he was either reasonably fulfilling the duties of his employment or doing something incidental thereto or to the conditions under which those duties were to be performed.' Lima v. William Haskell Mfg Co., 100 R.I. 312 at 314, 215 A.2d 229 at 230.

That the injury in this case took place on the employer's premises and where she might reasonably have been expected to be is not disputed. There is agreement also that under our rule a period of employment is not necessarily limited to the precise moment when the employee is scheduled to begin and...