Peters v. Bristol Mfg. Corp.

• Decision Date: 17 April 1962
• Docket Number: No. 2965,2965
• Citation: 94 R.I. 255,179 A.2d 853
• Parties: Rita M. PETERS v. BRISTOL MANUFACTURING CORPORATION. Equity
• Court: Rhode Island Supreme Court

Page 853

179 A.2d 853

94 R.I. 255

Rita M. PETERS v. BRISTOL MANUFACTURING CORPORATION.

Equity No. 2965.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

April 17, 1962.

Abedon, Michaelson & Stanzler, Richard A. Skolnik, Providence, for petitioner.

Vincent J. Chisholm, Providence, for respondent.

CONDON, Chief Justice.

This is an original petition for workmen's compensation. The cause is here on the employee's appeal from a decree of the workmen's compensation commission affirming a decree of the trial commissioner which denied and dismissed the petition on the ground that the employee's injury did not arise out of and in the course of her employment.

The facts are undisputed. The petitioner is employed in respondent's plant on Buttonwood avenue in the town of Bristol. She travels to and from her place of employment by automobile. The respondent maintains a parking lot on Buttonwood avenue across from its plant with an attendant who directs the plant's employees where to park. On February 11, 1961 at the conclusion of her work petitioner left the plant intending to cross Buttonwood avenue to the parking lot. While walking on the sidewalk immediately adjacent to the plant and only ten feet away from the main gate she slipped on some ice and suffered a linear fracture of the tibia which incapacitated her until April 10, 1961.

The petitioner's appeal raises the question whether in such circumstances the injury arose out of and in the course of her employment. The respondent argues that it did not, because it happened on the public highway and was not causally connected with the employment. The petitioner contends that where the injury happened is not controlling if what she was doing at the time thereof was an incident of her employment. She claims that it was, since the parking lot to which she was going was operated by respondent to facilitate the coming and going of its employees to and from their work.

The general rule is that an injury on the public highway while an employee is going to or coming from the employer's premises does not arise out of and in the course of the employee's employment. However, the rule is now subject to so many exceptions that it cannot be safely invoked in every instance. The more practicable rule is that each case should be decided on the basis of its own facts and circumstances. Canoy v. State Compensation Com'r, 113 W.Va. 914, 170 S.E. 184. In the consideration of each case in the light of this rule it has been observed that there is a modern tendency toward liberality on finding injuries arising from some 'street risks' compensable. Kuharski v. Bristol Brass Corp., 132 Conn. 563, 46 A.2d 11; Note, 51 A.L.R. 514.

In line with this view we have recently held that the happening of an injury on a public highway while the employee was going to work did not of itself preclude a finding of compensability. Tromba v. Harwood Mfg. Co., R.I., 177 A.2d 186, 188. The right to compensation depended, we said, 'upon the establishment of a nexus between the injury and his employment,' and we pointed out that it would be inappropriate...