Supreme Court of Georgia Jettisons 85-Year-Old Decision Regarding “Off-the-Clock” Injuries
Jettisoning a decision that had stood for more than 85 years, a divided Supreme Court of Georgia overruled Ocean Acc. & Guar. Corp. v. Farr, 180 Ga. 266 (178 SE 728) (1935), and reversed an earlier decision of the state’s Court of Appeals in the instant matter that had denied workers’ compensation benefits to a worker who sustained injuries when she slipped and fell at her place of employment during a scheduled lunch break [Frett v. State Farm Employee Workers’ Comp., 2020 Ga. LEXIS 458 (June 16, 2020)]. Finding the reasoning in Farr to be “unsound,” and “completely untethered from the analytical framework consistently employed” by the high court in workers’ compensation cases “for nearly a century,” the majority of the Court said that Farr impermissibly conflated the “in the course of” and “arising out of” prerequisites to compensability. In sum, said the majority, “the stare decisis factors weigh in favor of overruling Farr, and the Court expressly did so.
Background
Frett, an insurance claims associate for State Farm, had a mandatory, unpaid 45-minute lunch break. An automated system scheduled staggered lunch breaks to ensure enough associates were available to handle calls. After logging on for the day, Frett would see her schedule, including the time for her lunch break. At her scheduled lunch break time, Frett would log out of the phone system. All parties agreed that Frett was free to do as she pleased on her break and could leave the office for lunch if she wished. Frett was not expected or asked to do work during her lunch breaks. Generally, Frett brought her lunch and would walk to the State Farm employee breakroom on her floor to prepare her food. During the spring and summer, she would eat her lunch on a bench outside of the office building or in her car in the parking lot. State Farm has a suite within the shared office building, but did not own the parking lot or the surrounding outdoor areas.
On the day of the incident, Frett logged out of the phone system at her assigned time and walked to the breakroom where she microwaved her food. As Frett started to exit the breakroom to take her lunch outside the building, she slipped on water and fell, suffering an injury. It is undisputed that Frett was still inside the breakroom when she fell.
Frett sought workers’ compensation benefits, but the Board ultimately found that Frett had not sustained a compensable injury under the Act because, although her injury “arose in the course of her employment, it did not arise out of her employment but, instead, arose out of a purely personal matter.” Frett sought judicial review in the Superior Court of DeKalb County, which ultimately affirmed the denial of benefits. Citing Farr, the Court of Appeals affirmed, finding that Frett’s injury was not compensable because it occurred during a scheduled lunch break, when she was “free to do as she pleased.”
Course of Employment
Justice Blackwell wrote for the majority. Initially, the justice concluded that Frett sustained an injury “in the course of” her employment, noting that it was undisputed that she was injured on the premises of her employer, in the middle of her workday, while preparing to eat lunch. This activity, said the justice, was reasonably necessary to sustain her comfort at work, was incidental to her employment, and was not beyond the scope of compensability under the Act.
Being Off-The-Clock Was Not Dispositive
Justice Blackwell continued by noting that the fact that Frett was not paid during her lunch break, or that she was free to do other tasks during that time, was not dispositive of whether her preparation to eat lunch was “in the course of” her employment. When analyzing the “in the course of” prerequisite, courts generally focused on the nature of the employee’s activity at the time of the injury, not whether she was paid for it or was free to do something else.
The justice stressed that was not such a close case. It was clear that Frett was injured during an ordinary lunch break in the middle of her workday in a breakroom provided by her employer for the use of employees during such breaks. Frett was indeed using her break time to prepare and eat her lunch, not to run some personal errand. Thus, the majority had no trouble concluding, as did the Board, that Frett was injured “in the course of” her employment.
Arising Out of the Employment
Citing earlier decisions, Justice Blackwell indicated that an injury arises out of the employment when a reasonable person, after considering the circumstances of the employment, would perceive a causal connection between the conditions under which the employee must work and the resulting injury. Here, it was undisputed that Frett was injured when she slipped and fell on the wet floor of the breakroom on her employer’s premises. The justice said it logically followed that her injury was causally connected to the conditions under which she worked, and her injury, therefore, “arose out of” her employment. Nevertheless, that determination would seem to conflict with Farr, acknowledged the majority.
Facts in Farr Were Quite Similar
In Farr, the claimant — a steam-fitter and plumber — was injured when he tripped and fell while walking down stairs to a boiler room, where he intended to eat his lunch. The injury occurred on a job site — the claimant was assigned to work in the boiler room — during a 30-minute lunch break. The Farr Court reasoned that the injury arose after Farr had “knocked off” from his work, and while he was preparing to eat his lunch. His preparation for lunch and his eating lunch was his individual affair. It was not a part of his employer’s work. Justice Blackwell continued that because the facts in Farr and this case were so similar, Farr strongly suggests that the injury sustained by Frett was not compensable. The justice stated firmly, “if Farr remains good law, the decision of the Board in this case must be upheld [Opinion, p. 13].
Farr’s Reasoning Was Unsound
According to the majority, the reasoning of Farr was unsound, and it was “completely untethered from the analytical framework consistently employed by this Court in workers’ compensation cases for nearly a century” [Opinion, p. 14]. The majority said that in Farr, the Court determined that the injury at issue did not arise out of employment because it occurred at a time when the employee had left his work duties and was engaged in an “individual pursuit” [Farr, 180 Ga. at 270-271]. In so reasoning, the Farr Court impermissibly conflated the “in the course of” and “arising out of” prerequisites to compensability. Whether a worker is performing an employment-related activity at the time of the injury is a question that belongs squarely to the “in the course of” prerequisite. On the other hand, the “arising out of” prerequisite deals with causation — whether there is a “causal connection” between the employment and the injury. The majority added that if the Farr court had engaged in the proper analysis, its conclusion would have been different.
Traveling Employee Distinction?
Justice Blackwell observed that in Thornton v. Hartford Acc. & Indem. Co., 198 Ga. 786, 32 SE2d 816 (1945), decided 11 years after Farr, the Court held that a traveling salesman injured on his way from dinner was entitled to compensation, and the Court reasoned, in part, that eating a meal was an activity incidental to his employment. The justice stressed that nothing in Thornton suggested that traveling employees were not free to do as they pleased during some parts of the day, or that they were always considered to be in the course of the employment while away from home. To the contrary, the Thornton court stated that continuous employment “does not mean that [a traveling employee] can not step aside from his employment for personal reasons, or reasons in no way connected with his employment, just as might an ordinary employee working on a schedule of hours at a fixed location” [198 Ga. at 790].
Justice Blackwell concluded, “It makes little sense to say that a traveling employee who chooses to eat a meal rather than go to the beach during his free time is covered under the Act, but an ordinary employee who makes the same choice during a break is not” [Opinion, p. 22]. In sum, said the justice, the stare decisis factors weighed in favor of overruling Farr, and the majority of the Court did so with its decision in the instant case.
Dissent
Justice Peterson dissented, stating in relevant part:
I agree with much of what is said in the majority opinion. I agree that Ocean Accident & Guarantee Corp. v. Farr, 180 Ga. 266 (178 SE 728) (1935), was probably wrongly decided. I agree that unless overruled, Farr controls the outcome in this case. And I agree that the result of the majority’s overruling of Farr is probably an improvement in the law. But right or wrong, Farr has been the law for 85 years. In my view, stare decisis counsels against overruling such a venerable statutory precedent without an unusually compelling reason. And I have grown increasingly troubled by the ease with which our Court overcomes stare decisis in statutory interpretation cases, a category of cases in which we claim that stare decisis applies with special force. Because I see no unusually compelling reason to overrule the 85-year-old statutory precedent in question here, I respectfully dissent.