Roberts v. Montgomery County, 84 A.3d 87

Thaddus Roberts, a Montgomery County firefighter on light duty, was paid for four 10-hour shifts and encouraged to perform two hours of paid physical training at a location of his choice.
On October 28, 2010, Roberts trained at Friendly High School (work-encouraged), then left to pick up work mail at Fire Station 19 (a monthly practice supervisors knew about) and was injured in a motorcycle crash en route.
Roberts filed a workers’ compensation claim; the Commission denied it, concluding the injury did not arise out of and in the course of employment.
The Circuit Court and the Court of Special Appeals (majority) affirmed, applying the going-and-coming rule and treating Roberts as not yet at work site when injured; a dissent disagreed.
The Maryland Court of Appeals granted certiorari and applied the positional-risk ("but for") test, holding Roberts’s travel was incidental to employment because he moved from one employer-related activity/site to another with employer acquiescence.
The Court vacated the lower courts’ judgments and remanded for proceedings consistent with its conclusion that the injury was compensable.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether the injury "arose out of and in the course of employment"	Roberts: "But for" employer-encouraged training and employer-acquiesced mail pickup, he would not have been traveling and injured	County: Injury occurred while commuting to the fixed work site (Headquarters); going-and-coming rule bars recovery	Held: Compensable — positional-risk (but-for) test applies; travel was incidental to employment
Applicability of the going-and-coming rule	Roberts: Rule inapplicable because he was traveling between two work-related sites/activities	County: Rule applies; Roberts was merely on his way to work and not yet at employer premises	Held: Rule does not apply where employee travels from one employer-encouraged site to another site for a work task to which employer acquiesced
Whether Fire Station 19 counted as work-related destination	Roberts: Station 19 was a work-related site for mail pickup; supervisors knew and acquiesced	County: Mail pickup was not an official duty; employee was acting on his own time/risk	Held: Employer acquiescence (supervisors aware of practice) made the Station a work-related site and rendered travel incidental to employment

Board of County Commissioners for Frederick County v. Vache, 349 Md. 526, 709 A.2d 155 (Md. 1998) (articulates going-and-coming rule and its exceptions)
Mulready v. University Research Corp., 360 Md. 51, 756 A.2d 575 (Md. 2000) (adopts positional-risk but-for test for compensability)
Livering v. Richardson’s Restaurant, 374 Md. 566, 823 A.2d 687 (Md. 2003) (applies positional-risk test to an employee visiting workplace on a day off)
Montgomery County v. Wade, 345 Md. 1, 690 A.2d 990 (Md. 1997) (defines "in the course of" and time/place/circumstances analysis)
Montgomery County v. Deibler, 423 Md. 54, 31 A.3d 191 (Md. 2011) (emphasizes remedial purpose of Workers’ Compensation Act)