Whether or not an injury on a work trip is covered by Kentucky workers compensation depends on the facts. A recent case decided by the Kentucky Supreme Court, Thompson Catering v. Costello, provides a useful example.
Costello was an event manager for Thompson Catering and she traveled to Las Vegas for a conference. After the conference ended, Costello had some time to kill before her flight home. According to the Court's opinion, Costello "left her luggage with the hotel bellman and headed outside for a few minutes to shop for souvenirs for her nieces and nephews. While descending stairs leading out of the hotel, Costello tripped and fell, injuring her right ankle." It was a bad fall and serious injury: Costello was taken immediately to the emergency room and had a total of four surgeries.
The question, obviously, is whether Costello's injury was sufficiently work-related. It implicates what the Court refers to as the "traveling employee exception," which applies "where a worker's employment requires travel away from one's regular worksite, and it 'considers an injury that occurs while the employee is in travel status to be work-related unless the worker waqs engaged in a significant departure from the purpose of the trip.'" The finer question, then, is whether Costello had significantly departed from the purpose of the trip at the time she fell and was injured.
The Court ruled that Costello had not significantly departed from the purpose of the trip when she fell and, therefore, that her injuries were covered by workers compensation. First, even if Costello was on a personal errand when she fell, it made a difference that it happened so quickly, as the Court explained: "the actual duration of the deviation was even less than a few minutes because Costello was injured as she exited the premises of the hotel, and the objective of her personal mission was never fulfilled." Second, while Costello was sort of on her personal time -- the conference had concluded and she was waiting for her flight -- she was at the hotel and waiting for the flight because her job required it of her. Furthermore, she hadn't skipped out of the conference to go shopping as the Court noted: "There is no indication ... that Costello ruptured the course of her employment by deliberately delaying her departure to pursue extended personal amusements, and 'there was no evidence that [her] employer restricted [her] activities during such periods.'" Third, Costello didn't do anything to heighten the risk of danger to herself such as take an unreasonable route or expose herself to abnormally hazardous conditions.
The sum and substance of this seems to be as follows: (1) the shopping trip was a very minor side trip, one that a reasonable person would take; (2) there was no shirking or abandonment of the work trip's purpose; and, (3) the shopping errand was within the confines and consistent with the trip's schedule. It seems easy to conclude that Costello's actions were not different than if she'd fell in a shop at the airport while shopping for her family members.
This is a reasonable decision and one that turns very much on its particular facts. The answer to the question is an injury sustained on a work trip covered by Kentucky workers compensation is it depends.
Lexington, Kentucky workers compensation and work injury lawyer Robert Abell represents employees that have suffered work injuries covered by Kentucky workers compensation; contact him at 859-254-7076.
