Springer v. J.B. Transp., Inc., 33998.
| Decision Date | 24 September 2013 |
| Docket Number | No. 33998.,33998. |
| Citation | 77 A.3d 179,145 Conn.App. 805 |
| Court | Connecticut Court of Appeals |
| Parties | Alex SPRINGER et al. v. J.B. TRANSPORT, INC., et al. |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Andrew J. Hern, with whom was Meryl A. Spat, Waterbury, for the appellant (plaintiff Donna Springer).
Gerald V. Davino II, Rocky Hill, for the appellees (defendants).
BEACH, SHELDON and BISHOP, Js.
This is an appeal by the plaintiff Donna Springer, 1 of Norfolk, Connecticut, from the decision of the Workers' Compensation Review Board (review board), affirming the denial by the workers' compensation commissioner for the fifth district (commissioner) of her claim for dependent's benefits under General Statutes § 31–3062 of the Workers' Compensation Act (act); General Statutes § 31–275 et seq.; in connection with the work related 3 death of her husband, Alex Springer (decedent), while driving through West Virginia for his employer, the defendant 4 J.B. Hunt Transport, Inc.5 The commissioner, citing Cleveland v. U.S. Printing Ink, Inc., 218 Conn. 181, 195, 588 A.2d 194 (1991), and its progeny, held that the Workers' Compensation Commission (commission) lacked subject matter jurisdiction over the plaintiff's claim for benefits because, inter alia, Connecticut was not the place of the decedent's employment relation with the defendant.6
On appeal, as before the review board, the plaintiff claims that the commissioner erred in deciding that Connecticut was not the place of the employment relation between her decedent and the defendant. She thus argues that the review board erred in affirming the commissioner's decision to that effect in deference to the commissioner's factual findings. For the following reasons, we agree with the plaintiff that the commissioner misapplied the “place of the employment relation” test of Cleveland in denying her claim for dependent's benefits, and thus we reverse the review board's affirmance of that denial and remand this case for further proceedings on the plaintiff's claim.
The record discloses the following undisputed facts and procedural history. The decedent was a resident of Connecticut who worked as a truck driver under a Connecticut commercial driver's license. In 2004, the decedent applied for a position as a truck driver with the defendant by contacting it over the Internet from his home in Connecticut. A representative of the defendant responded to the defendant's application by calling him at home to ask him a series of preliminary questions. During that call, the decedent authorized the defendant to conduct a background check as to his driving history. After passing the background check, the decedent was invited to attend a three day orientation at the defendant's New Jersey orientation facility, where he passed a road test and completed a written application for employment. On April 3, 2004, after successfully completing the orientation and passing both a Department of Transportation physical examination and a preemployment drug screening test, the decedent began his employment as a truck driver for the defendant, retroactive to the first day of his orientation.
As a newly hired driver, the decedent was placed in a dedicated contract services (DCS) position. 7 The decedent was assigned to a DCS account for Family Dollar Tree, which maintained a dispatch facility at its distribution center in Front Royal, Virginia.
In accordance with the defendant's policy, the decedent began each new trip to make deliveries to Family Dollar Tree stores at the Front Royal distribution center.8 After his trailer was loaded at that location, he departed to make deliveries at specific times and places, as directed by his dispatch manager at the distribution center. At the end of each trip, after making his final delivery, the decedent returned with his empty trailer to the distribution center in Front Royal to await the reloading of his trailer and the start of his next trip. When he returned to Front Royal during the week, he slept overnight in his cab. When, however, he returned from a trip at the end of the week, he typically waited in Front Royal until the trailer was reloaded on Saturday or Sunday, then drove home to Connecticut for the rest of the weekend before heading out to make his first delivery on the following Monday.9 The decedent was paid for his work on the basis of the deliveries he made and the miles he drove for his employer. He was not reimbursed, however, for any expenses he incurred either to drive his loaded tractor trailer home for the weekend or to park it on a private lot near his home while he was there.10
By the date of his death on June 12, 2004, the decedent had worked for the defendant for approximately ten weeks. During that time, he worked all or part of fifty-one days, on five of which he made deliveries to Family Dollar Tree stores in Connecticut. Twelve of the decedent's seventy-two deliveries in that period were to Family Dollar Tree stores in Connecticut.
At the hearing before the commissioner, the plaintiff claimed that the commission had jurisdiction over her claim for benefits in connection with the decedent's death because the relationship between Connecticut and the decedent's employment relation with the defendant was sufficiently significant to warrant awarding her such benefits under § 31–306. The plaintiff argued, under Cleveland and its progeny, that in deciding if the commission has jurisdiction over a claim for workers' compensation benefits based upon the significance of the relationship between an injured employee's employment relation with his employer and this state, the commissioner must consider both the nature of the employee's work for the employer and the basis upon which the employer compensated the employee for such work. The question presented, she argued, is whether the level or extent of the employee's work in Connecticut or on behalf of the employer's customers in Connecticut was so significant as to give this state an interest in awarding benefits in connection with his injuries under the act. Specifically, the plaintiff claimed that, on the basis of the decedent's miles and hours driven during trips, back and forth from Virginia, to and from Connecticut destinations and other destinations that required him to pass, back and forth, through Connecticut, the state had a sufficiently significant relationship to or interest in the decedent's employment relation with the defendant to warrant awarding her dependent's benefits under Connecticut law.
The defendant, by contrast, argued that the commission did not have jurisdiction over the plaintiff's claim because the defendant did not conduct sufficient business in Connecticut to warrant awarding workers' compensation benefits to any of its injured employees or their dependents under Connecticut law and, in any event, that Virginia, from which the plaintiff was already collecting survivor's benefits, had jurisdiction over the plaintiff's decedent's injury under the place of the employment relation test of Cleveland because it was the state where all of his trips to make deliveries started and ended and the state from which all of his work activities were directed and supervised.
As for the defendant's own business contacts with Connecticut, the defendant insisted that such contacts were minimal because of its incorporation and maintenance of its business headquarters elsewhere, its lack of special service or training facilities in Connecticut and the small percentage of its overall business in the United States and Canada that was conducted in Connecticut during the year of the decedent's death. As for the decedent's personal employment contacts with Connecticut in the course of his employmentby the defendant, the defendant focused exclusively on the number of deliveries the decedent made to stores in Connecticut while working for it (twelve of seventy-two total deliveries) and the number of days he spent making those deliveries (five of fifty-one working days). The defendant made no argument with respect to the total miles the decedent drove to, through and back to Virginia from Connecticut during the ten weeks of his employment compared to all of the miles he drove elsewhere or for other purposes in that time frame.
Not persuaded by the plaintiff's argument, the commissioner issued a decision on June 30, 2010, denying the plaintiff's claim, based, inter alia, upon the finding that Connecticut was not the place of the decedent's employment relation with the defendant.11
In reaching her conclusion that Connecticut was not the place of the employment relation between the plaintiff's decedent and the defendant, the commissioner made the following findings of fact. As for the decedent's employment contacts with the state, the commissioner found only that, in the course of his work for the defendant, the decedent never picked up any merchandise in Connecticut and that he only made deliveries to Family Dollar Tree stores in Connecticut on five of the fifty-one days he worked. Hence, although the commissioner concluded, in summary fashion, that she “d[id] not find the position and reasoning of the [plaintiff's] attorney persuasive regarding the total number of miles and corresponding percentages he calculated for [the decedent's] travel to Connecticut and through Connecticut,” she made no findings as to the facts upon which that determination was based and offered no explanation for her rejection of the plaintiff's attorney's position.
As for the relationship between the defendant and the state of Connecticut, apart and away from the decedent's employment contacts with this state in the course of his employment by the defendant,...
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