Kamenetti v. Sangillo & Sons, LLC, Docket No. A-0394-16T3, 2018 N.J. Super. Unpub. LEXIS 1883 (App. Div., Decided Aug. 8, 2018)

Injury to truck driver at truck stop shower not compensable.

The petitioner was employed as an over-the-road truck driver. He stopped at a truck stop equipped with a full-service station and a shower. After showering, he sat on a bench to put on his boots, and the bench collapsed and he was injured. He filed a claim with the Division of Workers’ Compensation, along with a motion seeking medical treatment and temporary benefits. The judge of compensation found that the petitioner’s injuries arose out of and in the course of his employment and granted his motion. The judge reasoned that a truck driver who stops to get fuel and to shower is doing so, so that he can continue the safe and efficient performance of his duties and, as such, is acting within the scope of his employment.

In reversing the Judge of Compensation’s holding, the Appellate Division relied on Jumpp v. City of Ventnor, 351 N.J. Super. 44 (2001), in which an employee, whom the City required to drive from site to site to perform his duties, was permitted by the City to make “brief stops at local establishments for food and beverages or to use the restroom” and to “retrieve his personal mail from a local post office.” As he was picking up his mail at the post, and he slipped while walking back to his vehicle. The Jumpp court found that his injury was not compensable, because “an employee who deviates from the temporal and spacial limits of his . . . employment tasks for the sole purpose of engaging in a personal errand or activity is simply not engaged in the direct performance of duties as required by the statute.”

The Appellate Division found that applying the definition of “off-premises employment” in N.J.S.A. 34:15-36 and Jumpp indicates that the petitioner could not claim workers’ compensation benefits. When he was injured, he was putting on his boots after showering, not “performing his . . . prescribed job duties at the time of the injury.” Thus, he was not engaged in the “direct performance of duties” assigned or directed by the employer and was not in the course of employment. His injury, the Appellate Division reasoned, was non-compensable because the statute states that off-premises employees are to be compensated only for accidents occurring in the direct performance of their duties. 

 

Case Law Alerts, 1st Quarter, January 2019

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