88 Pa. Commw. 426 | Pa. Commw. Ct. | 1985
Opinion by
Marion R. Jones (claimant) appeals here from an order of the Workmen’s Compensation Appeal Board (Board) denying disability benefits on the basis that her disabling injury was not sustained while she was in the course of her employment.
The findings establish that .the claimant, a registered nurse, was employed by Rehabilitation Coordinators, Inc. (employer) as a rehabilitation coordinator and that she worked out of her own home, setting her
Section 301(c) of the Workmen’s Compensation Act
The Board conceded that this claimant had no fixed place of work and that she was compensated for her transportation expenses. It determined, however, that, on the date of the injury in question, her transportation was over when she parked her car, and that she was then “home” and no longer performing her duties as an employee. It then further noted that, while she did work for the employer at her house, her intentions on entering the house were merely to prepare dinner, not to work for the employer. The Board concluded that the injury did not occur in the course of her employment because what she was doing did not bring her within any of the exceptions to the “going and coming” rule.
In workmen’s compensation cases the burden is on the claimant seeking benefits to demonstrate eligibility, and, where the party with the burden of proof failed to prevail below, our scope of review is limited to determining whether or not the findings of fact are consistent with each other and with the conclusions of law and whether or not they may be sustained without a capricious disregard of competent evidence. Hepp v. Workmen’s Compensation Appeal Board (B.P. Oil Co.), 67 Pa. Commonwealth Ct. 330, 447 A.
The employer’s witness, who was responsible for supervising its operations for the claimant’s region, testified unequivocally and without contradiction that the claimant was paid her regular wages for her transportation time on a portal to portal basis. We believe, therefore, that the Board’s finding that her earning time began and ended with her entering and leaving her car was in capricious disregard of the evidence.
In Port Authority of Allegheny County v. Workmen’s Compensation Appeal Board (Stevens), 70 Pa. Commonwealth Ct. 163, 452 A.2d 902 (1982) we noted that a traveling employee is within the course of employment “unless what he' was doing at the time of the accident is so foreign to and removed from his usual employment as to constitute an abandonment thereof. ’ ’ Id. at 166, 452 A.2d at 904. The employer argues that this case does not apply here because it involved a bus driver injured while taking an authorized lunch break. It argues that the claimant here had virtually abandoned her employment at the time of injury because she had finished with her use of the automobile for transportation. At the time of her injury, however, this claimant was not on her own time, but the employer’s, and was being paid for .that time pursuant to the employer’s personnel policy, which anticipated her return home as incidental to the duties she performed there and elsewhere on its behalf. A homeward trip under such circumstances is a necessary part of employment, Oakes v. Workmen’s Compensation
We will, therefore, reverse the order of the Board.
Order
And Now, this 29th day of March, 1985, the order of the Workmen’s Compensation Appeal Board in the above-captioned matter is reversed.
Act of June 2, 1915, P.L. 736, as amended, 77 P.S. §411.