The principal issue presented in this case is whether an injury sustained by an off-duty police officer while operating a
patrol vehicle for personal purposes as permitted by departmental regulations is compensable under the Maryland Workers’ Compensation Act. Specifically, Petitioner, Montgomery County, seeks to classify the injury suffered by Respondent, police officer Pamela Wade, as falling without the contemplation of Maryland Code (1991 RephVol.), §§ 9-101(b) and 9-501
I.
On September 4, 1988, Officer Wade, while not on scheduled duty or in uniform and while operating her personal patrol vehicle, was hit from behind by another vehicle. At the time of the accident, Officer Wade was on her way to her mother’s home; her grandmother was a passenger in the car. Officer Wade sustained upper body injuries that ultimately necessitated surgery. Thereafter, on October 18,1990, she filed a claim with the Workers’ Compensation Commission (hereinafter “the Commission”). The Commission found, in an order dated August 27, 1991, that Officer Wade had “sustained an accidental injury arising out of and in the course of employment,” and, as a result, was entitled to temporary total disability benefits for those injuries. Judicial review of that order, which was sought by Montgomery County, came before a jury in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County on November 2, 1994. Following the court’s denial of the parties’ motions for judgment at the close of all the evidence and its refusal of a number of the County’s requested jury instructions, the jury confirmed the Commission’s award. The County appealed the judgment on that verdict to the Court of Special Appeals. After the intermediate appellate court affirmed the judgment in an unreported opiniоn, we granted the County’s petition for certiorari.
II.
Montgomery County police officers are permitted, under certain circumstances and subject to a variety of restrictions, to maintain a personal patrol vehicle, or PPV. According to the County, “[a] PPV is a bargained for benefit of employment available to Montgomery County police officers in the bargaining unit with its use subject to certain guidelines and restrictions.” According to the directive of the Montgomery County Police Department, published on July 1, 1985, the PPV program (hereinafter “the program”) was established “to provide the highest level of police service to thе community by providing greater police visibility on the streets and in the neighborhoods of Montgomery County, and by enhancing the responsiveness of both on-duty and off-duty officers to calls for service.”
2
To this end, the program places very stringent procedural and operational regulations upon those who are assigned a vehicle. In operation thereof, the off-duty officers must carry a handgun, handcuffs, and department credentials,
and equip the PPV with items such as flares, a fire extinguisher, a nightstick, a tactical duty helmet, and a traffic vest and gloves.
3
They must monitor the police radio, and may make traffic stops “only when inaction would reflect unfavorably upon the department.”
It is undisputed that a benefit inures to the County by virtue of this program. The County concedes as much. Indeed, аccording to Lt. Hargrove, even while officers are operating their PPVs for purposes other then responding to a call for police assistance, they are still providing a police service, to the extent that the PPV is a visual deterrent to criminal activity. The question remains, however, whether by virtue of the benefits the County receives from the program injuries sustained by participating officers are compensable as arising out of and in the course of the employment within the meaning of the Workers’ Compensation Act. It is to resolution of this query that we address our decision.
III.
A.
Under the Workers’ Compensation Act (hereinafter “the Act”), a compensable “[a]ccidental personal injury” includes “an accidental injury that arises out of and in the course of employment.” LE § 9—101(b)(1). 4 Just what “arises out of’ and “in the course of’ one’s employment has been the subject of considerable dispute, particularly in respect to police officers and other employees who, while not scheduled for duty twenty-four hours a day, in essence must hold themselves ready for duty at a moment’s notice by virtue of the nature of their employment. As a threshold matter, ascertaining the nature and extent of an employee’s duties is integral to a determination of the compensability vel non of an injury; that is to say, what arises out of and in the course of employment is highly dependant upon the precise nature of the employee’s duties. Each case requires individual evaluation.
The County disputes that an officer operating a PPV while off duty for personal purposes may sustain any injury that arises out of and in the course of his or her employment. Because Officer Wade was not responding to a call for service or otherwise performing a police function during the time she was using her PPV on September 4, 1988, the County posits, the requisite causal connection between the conditions under which the work is rеquired to be performed and the resulting injury is absent. In other words, “a person who has the benefit of an employer provided vehicle (whatever the employer’s motivation) and chooses to use that vehicle for personal reasons, is not operating the vehicle in the course of employment.” If, however, the County contends, this Court were to determine that there was a sufficient nexus between the employment relationship and its interest in providing PPVs to its police officers such that their use arose out of and in the course of the employment, the reasoning applicable to both the dual purpose doctrinе and special errand exception to the “going and coming” rule, while not applicable, would render Officer Wade’s injury noncompensable. We do not agree with either proposition.
The mere occurrence of an accident is an insufficient basis upon which to predicate a workers’ compensation claim. Richard P. Gilbert & Robert L. Humphreys, Jr.,
Maryland Workers’ Compensation Handbook
§ 5.2 (2d ed.1993). The policy of the Act is to compensate only those injuries that are occupationally-related, and not those perils common to all mankind or to which the public is generally exposed.
See Blake Constr. Co. v. Wells,
1.
An injury is said to “arise out of’ one’s employment when it results from some obligation, condition, or incident of
the employment.
Knoche v. Cox,
Officer Wade’s use of her PPV on September 4, 1988, was clearly incidental to her role as a patrol officer. The Montgomery County police department established a program whereby its officers were permitted to use their patrol cruisers as personal vehicles when not on regularly scheduled duty. It attached numerous аnd detailed regulations to this privilege and encouraged off-duty use of the PPVs in order to, inter alia, alleviate budget and staffing concerns and increase police presence throughout the County. Officer Wade would not have been operating a PPV but for her employment and consequent participation in the program. Thus, because her injuries stem from her use of the PPV within the department’s guidelines, the requisite causal link exists, and, under these circumstances, those injuries are properly considered to have arisen from her employment.
Given that Officer Wade’s injuries arose out of her employment, the compensability
vel non
of her сlaim, therefore, depends upon whether she was acting in the course of her employment at the time of the accident. The “course of employment” test directs our attention to the time, place, and circumstances of the accident in relation to the employment.
Knoche,
As we have stated, we must necessarily determine the scope of Officer Wade’s responsibilities to ascertain whether she was acting pursuant to the employment relationship she maintained with the department at the time of the accident. 6 If she was not performing those duties or engaged in something incident thereto, she may not recover.
As a patrol officer, Officer Wade carried out her duties through the use of a marked police cruiser. As she explained to the circuit court, “Most people work in а building; we [patrol officers] work from our cruiser. That’s our office.” Incident to that use, the department, by virtue of its unique program, permitted eligible officers to retain possession of the vehicle in furtherance of the objectives it set forth.
See
note
1,
supra.
The department, however, conditioned the use of the PPVs upon adherence to a stringent set of guidelines, which required,
inter alia,
that participating officers equip the vehicles with specified items, monitor the police radio, and “respond to incidents or calls for service.” The guidelines, in essence, outline additional responsibilities by which the participating officers are to abide upon penalty of, at minimum, expulsion from the program. Any time Officer Wade placed the vehicle in operation while she was not on scheduled duty, she was bound to act within those guidelines. Taking this view, she may, therefore, properly be considered to have been operating the
a.
Despite the County’s importuning, we find further support for the conclusion of the Court of Special Appeals that Officer Wade’s injuries resulted in the course of her employment in the dual purpose doctrine. The doctrine brings within its scope trips that serve both business and personal missions. As explained by Judge Cardozo in
In re Dependents of Marks v. Gray,
“If the work of the employee creates the necessity for travel, he is in the course of his employment, though he is serving at the same time some purpose of his own. If, however, the work has had no part in creating the necessity for travel, if the journey would have gone forward though the business errand had been dropped, and would have been canceled upon failure of the private purpose, though the business errand was undone, the travel is then personal, and personal the risk.”
See also Atlantic Refining Co. v. Forrester,
It is undisputed that, in the case sub judice, Officer Wade was not on scheduled duty on September 4, 1988, and she wаs using the PPV in furtherance of a personal errand—namely, transporting her grandmother to and from her mother’s house. That is not to say, however, that her use of the vehicle was purely personal so as to place her without the Act. As the Court of Special Appeals pointed out, under the unique circumstances of this case, where the police department assigned the PPVs, required officer response to certain, specified situations, and encouraged off-duty use of the vehicles— albeit within departmental guidelines—each time Officer Wade and any other participating officer placed the vehiclе in operation, a business purpose was being furthered. As gleaned from Lt. Hargrove’s testimony, at minimum, the benefit of visual deterrence inured to the County. In fact, Officer Wade testified that she had responded to incidents and calls for service on numerous occasions while off duty. Thus, while arguably the catalyst for Officer Wade’s use of the patrol car might have been personal in nature, once she deployed the vehicle on the streets of Montgomery County, any such personal purpose was overridden by the needs of the department, in essence, transforming her errand into one imbued with business aspects. Therefore, because both a business and personal purpose were being served on the day in question, Officer Wade’s use of her PPV was within the course of her employment.
Quoting from
Atlantic Refining Co. v. Forrester,
b.
The facts of the case at bar present a situation more akin to that addressed by the special errand, or special mission, principle.
7
It provides that, in undertaking a journey not normally covered under the Act, it “may be brought within the course of employment by the fact that the trouble and time of making the journey, or the special inconvenience, hazard, or urgency of making it in the particular circumstances, is itself sufficiently substantial to be viewed as an integral part of the service itself.” 1 Larson,
supra
§ 16.11;
see also Alitalia Linee Aeree Italiane v. Tornillo,
“[I]t could hardly be said that [ ]his employment, for which he was to be remunerated, would cover only the period for which he was actually at work in or about the store. The work that he was called upon to do under these circumstances differs greatly from the regular employment of one employed at regular hours at a given place, and who at the expiration of the period of his work is free to serve himself as he pleases.
There was, we think, an implied agreement, from the nature and character of the employment of the claimant in the performance of additional duties, that his employment was not to be restricted to the time in which he was at work at the store on such occasions. It was in the nature of an еrrand or mission on behalf of his employer, and when so treated his employment commenced at the time when he left his home to go to the store, and ended when he returned to his home.”
Id.
at 199,
The same may be said of Officer Wade. Although not required to utilize her PPV while off duty, such use was encouraged by the department, which benefitted from, among
other things, the increased police presence in the County.
8
Upon entry into the vehicle, Officer Wade was required to abide by the program’s numerous regulations. She was required to stop in particular circumstances or in response to calls for service. The duties and responsibilities concomitant to use of a PPV are in addition to those
The County reasons that, based upon our prior decision in
Police Comrn’r v. King,
C.
For the foregoing reasons, we hold that the Court of Special Appeals properly rejected the County’s assignment of error regarding the compensability
vel non
of Officer Wade’s claim. We similarly reject the County’s invitation to follow those decisions by foreign jurisdictions that have held, under comparable circumstancеs, that the injuries are not compensable under workers’ compensation statutes because they did not arise out of and in the course of employment.
See, e.g., Kunze v. City of Columbus Police Department,
IV.
The County also assigns error to the circuit court’s refusal of one of its proposed jury instructions. Regarding what constitutes a claim arising out of and in the course of employment, the court instructed the jury as follows:
“An accidental injury is defined as one which results from some unusual strain or exertion of the еmployee, or some unusual condition of the employment. An injury arises out of the employment if the injury results from some obligation, condition, or incident of the employment. An injury arises in the course of employment if it happens during a period of employment, at a place where the employee may reasonably be and while he or she is performing his or her work, or some other activity reasonably related to his or her work.”
The County contends that the “unique factual scenario and legal premise” of the case rendered the above instruction inadequate. It proffered the following instruction, which, it claims, more adequately addressed “the area which is the primary concern of this appeal”—namely, whether Officer Wade’s injuries incurred during the use of her PPV for a
“In order for Claimant Wade to be compensated for her injury by Montgomery County, she must show that her injury both arose out of and in the course of her employment. The terms ‘out of and ‘in the course of are not synonymous.
An injury arises out of the claimant’s employment when it results from some obligation, condition or incident of [her] employment. Whether it does must be dеcided from the facts and circumstances of each individual case. There must be a causal connection between the conditions under which the work is required to be performed and the ensuing injury. Thus, if the injury can be seen to have followed as a natural incident of the work and to have been contemplated by a reasonable person familiar with the whole situation as a result of the exposure occasioned by the nature of the employment, then it arises out of the employment. However, it does not include an injury which cannot be traced to the employment as a contributing, proximate cause and which comes from a hazard to which the [worker] would have been exposed away from the employment.
An injury arises in the course of employment when it happens during the period of employment at a place where the employee reasonably may be in performance of [her] duties ‘and while [she] is fulfilling those duties or engaged in something incident thereto.’ ”
Parties are “entitled to have the jury fairly instructed upon their theory of the case.”
Aleshire v. State ex rel. Dearstone, 225
Md. 355, 370,
The County avers that the trial court’s refusal of its instruction deprived the jury of the opportunity “to determine whether Wade’s off-duty operation of her PPV on a personal errand could have been found to have arisеn out of her employment as a patrol officer.” Based upon the unique circumstances presented, the County continues, the instruction it proffered was warranted and the trial court’s refusal to read the instruction “gave insufficient guidance to the jury to the detriment of the County.” Be that as it may, we hold that the Court of Special Appeals properly concluded that the court’s instruction “not only adequately, but more clearly, conveyed the law in this area.” Indeed, the trial court used the precise language recommended by Maryland Civil Pattern Jury Instruction No. 30:6 (Md. State Bar Association, 2d ed.) in describing the concepts of arising оut of and in the course of employment. It is hard to see how instructing the jury in the manner suggested by the County would have added any benefit to the jury’s deliberations.
JUDGMENT AFFIRMED; COSTS IN THIS COURT AND THE COURT OF SPECIAL APPEALS TO BE PAID BY PETITIONER.
Notes
. The applicable Maryland Code provisions at the time of the injury at issue here were located in Md.Code (1957), Art. 101, §§ 67(6) and 15, respectively. They were recodified by Chs. 8 and 21 of the Acts of 1991 without substantive change. Throughout this opinion, we shall cite to the recodified provisions.
. The testimony of Lieutenant Stephen Hargrove, the Commander of the Planning and Policy Management Section of the Montgomery County Police Department, listed seven recognized objectives of the program:
"(1) To inсrease police protection in Montgomery County by a greater visibility of police, resulting from an increased number of police patrol vehicles on the streets of [the] County;
(2) To promote police-community relations through personal contact and services performed by police officers in transit, as well as within their resident neighborhood;
(3) To deter crime by limiting the opportunity of the criminal to commit the act by the presence of more marked police vehicles;
(4) To provide quicker response time to certain types of calls, and thereby increase the opportunity for aрprehending the criminal;
(5) To provide quicker response of off-duty personnel when they are called back to duty because of an emergency;
(6) To provide increased incentive and morale to those officers in the program; and
(7) To provide improved care of the police vehicle, and therefore reduce maintenance and cost per individual responsibility.”
. Notably, the officer must carry and/or equip the vehicle with these items when he or she is on-duty.
. See also Md.Code (1991 Repl.Vol.), § 9-501(a) of the Labor and Employment Article, which provides, in relevant part, that "each employer of a covered employee shall provide compensation in accordance with this title to: (1) the covered employee for an accidental personal injury sustained by the covered employee.”
. As pointed out in 1 Arthur Larson, The Law of Workmen’s Compensation § 6.10 (1996): "Few groups of statutory words in the history of law have had to bear the weight of such a mountain of interpretation as has been heaped upon this slender foundation.”
. We note that "[t]he course of employment is ... confined [neither] to the actual manipulation of the tools of the work, nor to the exact hours of work." 1 Larson,
supra
§ 15.11. When discussing a worker's "employment,” we look to the actual labor performed as well as the whole period of time or sphere of activities in which the employee is engaged.
Watson v. Grimm,
. The special errand principle is an exception to what is known as the "going and coming” rule. That rule excludes injuries sustained while traveling to or from a place of employment, as falling outside the "course of employment.” Authorities reason that the hazards of such travel are ones to which the public at large is exposed while undertaking personal errands and, thus, should not be compensable under the Workers’ Compensation Act. Richard P. Gilbert & Robert L. Humphreys, Jr.,
Maryland Workers’ Compensation Handbook
§ 6.6 (2d ed.1993);
see also Director of Finance v. Alford,
. Indeed, the benefit received by the Montgomery County Police Department by PPV operation is arguably greater than that received by the store owner in
Reisinger-Siehler Co. v. Perry,