RI Supreme Court Broadens “Parking Lot” Rule to Include Leased Properties
Under Rhode Island’s so-called Branco exception to the going and coming rule, an employee and/or the employee’s dependents may recover workers’ compensation benefits where the employee’s injury or death results from traveling from the employer’s facility to a separate parking lot owned by the employer. In Phillips v. Enterprise Rent-A-Car Co. of R.I., LLC, 2022 R.I. LEXIS 40 (May 6, 2022), the Supreme Court of Rhode Island held the same rule should apply where the separate parking lot was leased—not owned—by the employer. Accordingly, it reversed a decision by the Appellate Division of the Workers’ Compensation Court that had denied death benefits to an employee who sustained fatal injuries just after the end of a workday when he was struck by at least one vehicle as he crossed a busy street separating his employer’s premises from a leased parking lot where his car was located.
Background
Phillips worked as a driver for Enterprise. Evidence was introduced that drivers were not allowed to park their private vehicles in a lot directly adjacent to the Enterprise premises, but instead were provided with parking in a lot that Enterprise leased across the street. Because Enterprise delivered its rental vehicles to customers, one driver would drive the rental vehicle to the customer, followed by a “chase vehicle” driven by another Enterprise driver. When the car was delivered to the customer, the two drivers would travel back to the Enterprise facility in that “chase vehicle.”
On the day of Phillips’ fatal injuries, he had delivered a vehicle to a customer, had returned to Enterprise in an Enterprise van operated by a co-employee, placed keys and paperwork in an Enterprise dropbox and then proceeded separately to cross Jefferson Boulevard in Warwick, Rhode Island. As Phillips cross the boulevard, he was struck by at least one vehicle. Phillips’ widow sought dependency benefits for the fatal injuries of her husband. Enterprise argued that the claim was barred by the going and coming rule.
Branco Exception to Going and Coming Rule
The trial judge of the Workers’ Compensation Court ruled that Phillips’ claim was not barred by the going-and-coming rule. Instead, the trial judge found that the Branco exception [see Branco v. Leviton Manufacturing Company, Inc., 518 A.2d 621 (R.I. 1986)] applied notwithstanding that Enterprise leased the employee parking spaces in the parking lot across the street since in either case the risk of crossing Jefferson Boulevard remained the same. The Appellate Division vacated the decree of trial judge and held that the going-and-coming rule precluded the widow from recovering dependency benefits. The widow appealed.
Supreme Court Points to Di Libero Decision
Initially, the Supreme Court observed that in Di Libero v. Middlesex Constr. Co., 63 R.I. 509, 9 A.2d 848 (1939), the Court established three criteria necessary to demonstrate a nexus or causal connection such that the injury would be cognizable despite the going-and-coming rule:
- The injury must have taken place within the period of employment;
- The injury must have occurred at a place where the employee might reasonably have been expected to be.
- At the time of the injury, the employee must have been reasonably fulfilling the duties of his or her job or performing some task incidental to those duties or to the conditions under which those duties were to be performed.
The Branco Exception to Going and Coming
The Court continued that in Branco, it considered how the Di Libero criteria applied to an employee who was injured while walking across a busy street from an employer-owned parking lot to the employer’s facilities where he worked. In Branco, the employer owned other lots as well, but had directed the employee to park in the particular lot from which he was walking at the time of his injury. Based on the facts presented in Branco, the Court ruled that the Di Libero criteria were squarely met. The Court continued:
Similarly, in the instant case, we believe that [Phillips’] injury falls under the Branco exception despite the test’s first prong not being strictly met. Here, it matters little whether Enterprise owned or maintained the parking lot across the street from its facility, because [Phillips] was not injured by a condition of that parking lot that Enterprise could have changed through ownership or maintenance [Opinion, p. 16].
The Court added:
[Phillips’] injury occurred due to the parking lot’s location across the street from Enterprise, a risk that was immutable and unchangeable irrespective of whether Enterprise owned or leased the lot. Regardless of ownership of the lot, the danger inherent in crossing Jefferson Boulevard to get from the employment facility to the parking lot remained the same [Opinion, p. 17].
The Supreme Court quashed the decree of the Appellate Division and remanded the case for reinstatement of the trial judge’s decision.