Salem: Appeals Board Instructs on Parking Lot Instances| Employees Compensation Information

By Jane Salem

Friday, June 11, 2021 | 0

The appeal committee recently published a statement confirming a court’s rejection of a summary judgment.

Jane Salem

The verdict focused on whether the move was meeting its production load. However, the board’s statement also reviewed a significant Supreme Court ruling on car park violations and concluded that the case remains good justice. In addition, it does not matter whether the employer owns or maintains the property.

In Rowe v. Mitsubishi Motors North America Inc., Tina Rowe left the work building to get a headset out of her car to use on a work-related call. Her car was parked in a nearby parking lot and it was raining. She tripped and fell, injuring her shoulder and arm in the process.

Mitsubishi denied the claim, claiming that the accident was not primarily a result of or within the scope of her employment and that her fall was idiopathic.

Mitsubishi filed a motion for a preliminary ruling, which the court denied on the grounds that it found real factual facts.

The Board of Appeal confirmed.

The board of directors discussed “material facts”. A fact is essential “if it has to be decided in order to determine the substantive claim or defense against which the motion is directed”. Furthermore, a “real problem” exists when a sensible fact-finder could legitimately resolve that fact for one side or the other.

The board wrote that Mitsubishi’s plea, rather than relying on material facts, “suggested as a legal conclusion that the employee could not prove the cause of her fall,” which Rowe denied.

“To resolve the causality problem, the court would have to compare the evidence regarding the cause of the employee’s fall, weigh factual statements and determine the credibility of the witnesses, which is inappropriate at the summary judgment stage,” the Appeal Committee recalled.

The board then considered Mitsubishi’s two arguments regarding the applicability of Lollar versus Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (1989).

First, Mitsubishi argued that this no longer applies to cases under the Reform Act.

In Lollar, the employer instructed its employees to park in a nearby public parking lot. As Ms. Lollar walked across the icy parking lot, she slipped and fell.

The Lollar Supreme Court mentioned that Tennessee’s labor compensation laws are “free to interpret”. The reform law of 2013 abolished the liberal construction.

However, according to the Appeals Committee, when discussing the verification standard, the Lollar Court mentioned the liberal construction, not the decision on parking cases.

The Lollar Court decided:

If the employer has provided his employees with a parking space, this parking space is part of the employer’s premises, regardless of whether the parking space is also available to customers or the public. The employment history includes not only the time for which the employee is actually paid, but also a reasonable amount of time during which the employee is necessarily on the employer’s premises when moving to or from the place of actual work.

The Appeals Chamber concluded that there was nothing in Lollar to suggest that the Supreme Court relied on the remedial provision of the Workers’ Compensation Act to make its decision on parking cases. In addition, the Supreme Court’s Special Workers’ Compensation Appeals Panel cited the Lollar rule only in 2017 with approval in a post-reform case, Duck v. Cox Oil Co.

Second, Mitsubishi argued that there could be no legal causal link with the employment since the parking lot in question is not the owner or operator.

The board said this was “conflat”[ing] the principles of the Tennessee Employee Compensation Act with those of the Public Liability Act. “

The board ruled on a similar issue in the Navyac v Universal Health Services case. In this case, a parking lot was not involved. Rather, a traveling employee left a toilet in a restaurant, slipped on a wet floor, and fell.

The board found that while the injury did not occur on the employer’s premises, the worker is likely to be able to demonstrate that the injury occurred within the scope and scope of her employment and that it resulted primarily from her employment because the wet floor caused a problem Risk to those who were exposed to her employment while engaged in a work-related task.

The board concluded: “[I]In accordance with the Supreme Court test as originally stipulated in Lollar, the court of first instance must also determine whether the worker was within the limits of her employment when she left the building to go to her car. “

Jane Salem is an attorney with the Tennessee Court of Workers’ Compensation Claims, Nashville. This entry is republished with permission from the court’s blog.