3rd Circuit Uses Helicopter Injury Case to Clarify “Injury Within the Scope of Employment”
Injuries in the workplace occur frequently and thus many states have forced employers to purchase workers’ compensation insurance. Under workers’ compensation, the employer’s insurance agrees to pay for any lost wages and medical bills as a result of the employee’s injury. In exchange for this security the employer may use workers’ compensation as an affirmative defense with the burden of proof on the employer to insulate the employer from tort liability. This essentially minimizes an injured’s claim. However, as Herbert v. Richard illustrates, it is vital that one consider whether or not the injury occurred while within the scope of employment. Depending on the answer to this question, an employer may be barred from using workers’ compensation as an affirmative defense to protect itself from tort liability, resulting in a potentially greater claim by the injured.
In Herbert v. Richard, an employee fell from a helicopter while netting deer in Mexico on behalf of a game management company, Game Management Inc (GMI). Though the deer netting enterprise was GMI’s, the employee worked for Industrial Helicopters, Inc., a company owned by the same family that owned GMI. Mr. Herbert, the employee, had been a fuel truck driver for twenty nine years and had only been on GMI’s netting excursions once before the injury. Industrial sought to invoke a workers’ compensation affirmative defense arguing that Mr. Herbert was either within the scope of his employment, was a borrowed employee from Industrial, or, alternatively, that Industrial and GMI were joint employers.
There are two issues that must be considered when determining if an injury has occurred within the scope of employment. The first gauge is whether or not the employee was engaged in the employer’s business at the time of injury. If the injury occurred while acting on behalf of the employer’s business, then it is likely that the injury falls within the scope of employment. For example, if an employee at a warehouse is responsible for loading the company truck and making deliveries to regional retail stores, an injury that occurs while loading the truck at the warehouse would fall under scope of employment. However, if the injured occurred while participating in business not related to the employer, then the injury would fall outside the scope of employment.
The second way an injury falls within the scope of employment is if the obligations of the employment caused the employee to be at the site of the accident at the time the accident occurred. Applying this to the example above, we see that if the truck driver was injured while unloading the company truck at a retail store his injury would fall within the scope of his employment because his job requires him to unload trucks at various stores. Even an injury obtained from an accident while in route to the retail store in this example would fall within the scope of employment because the truck driver is en route to the store only as a part of his employment. In these instances the employer would be able to use workers’ compensation as an affirmative defense and therefore protect itself from tort liability unless the tort was intentional.
The following questions also may be helpful in determining whether an injury has occurred within the scope of employment: Was I doing the act on behalf of my employer? Had I done that type of task for my employer before? Was I being paid for the work that was being completed at the time of the injury? Is this the type of work my employer regularly asks its employees to take part in? In addition to these questions, it is important to consider whether the injured was a “borrowed employee” or was working under “joint employment.”
These issues will be discussed in our next post.