Borrowing Doctrines Across Systems: Arkansas Reconsiders Travel, Tort Liability, and the Temptation of Workers’ Compensation Analogies

Skala v. Comfort Systems USA, Inc., 2025 Ark. 183, 2025 Ark. LEXIS 144 (Nov. 20, 2025), is one of those cases where the doctrinal lines between two distinct bodies of law—workers’ compensation and respondeat superior—are placed in such close enough proximity that courts can be tempted to treat them as interchangeable. They are not. And the Arkansas Supreme Court’s divided opinion in Skala illustrates both the perils and the necessity of keeping the two frameworks separate.

This, of course, is not merely an Arkansas phenomenon. As I noted two weeks ago when discussing Louisiana’s Crawford v. Tran, No. 25-302, 2025 La. App. LEXIS 2060 (La. App. 3 Cir. Oct. 29, 2025), some courts borrow workers’ compensation concepts—such as the “special mission” exception—into tort law with very little hesitation. Others, like Arkansas, hesitate. That hesitation matters.

Background

The case arose from a tragic, multi-fatality collision involving a daycare van and a vehicle driven by a welder, Cody Conboy, who was driving from his home to a remote construction site. The families sued Conboy and his employer, Comfort Systems USA, alleging both vicarious and direct liability.

The circuit court granted summary judgment for Comfort Systems, relying primarily on the workers’ compensation going-and-coming rule: commuting, it reasoned, is outside the “course and scope of employment,” so no vicarious liability could attach. In doing so, the court treated “course of employment” (a statutory phrase from the state’s Workers’ Compensation Act) as if it were obviously synonymous with the common-law “scope of employment” test governing respondeat superior.

The Arkansas Court of Appeals reversed. Comfort Systems sought review, and the Arkansas Supreme Court granted the petition. When the Arkansas Supreme Court accepts such a petition, the lower court’s opinion is vacated as a matter of procedure—but the Court is free to reach the same result. Here, a divided Court did just that.

The Majority: Scope of Employment Is a Jury Question

The Arkansas Supreme Court held that the circuit court erred by importing the going-and-coming doctrine from workers’ compensation into tort law. The Court reaffirmed Van Dalsen v. Inman, 238 Ark. 237, 379 S.W.2d 261 (1964): workers’ compensation cases, often decided under expansive “course of employment” principles designed to assure compensation to injured workers, do not govern tort cases sounding in respondeat superior.

The majority stressed that the proper inquiry is whether the employee’s conduct at the time of the accident was within the “scope of employment”—a narrower, fact-intensive question. And on that question, the Court found there was evidence from which reasonable minds could differ. Among the undisputed facts were:

• Conboy regularly worked at remote and shifting jobsites,
• He was required to maintain a valid driving record,
• He was required to have the ability to travel as part of his job,
• Comfort Systems had a travel-compensation policy,
• Conboy had been disciplined for violating that policy.

Although the majority never used the phrase “required to furnish his own vehicle,” the expectations placed on Conboy point unmistakably in that direction. He traveled constantly to remote and shifting job sites, was required to maintain a valid driving record, and was disciplined under an employer travel-compensation policy. In workers’ compensation terms, this constellation of facts often triggers what some jurisdictions call the “own conveyance” doctrine—an approach under which an employee’s commute may fall within the course of employment when the job effectively requires the worker to supply a vehicle as an essential instrumentality of the work.

That doctrine is hardly universal—and it arises almost exclusively in the workers’ compensation context, where courts are interpreting broad “course of employment” language in statutes designed to ensure coverage for injured workers. In tort, by contrast, the doctrine has no automatic force. The question is not whether the employee’s commute would have been compensable under workers’ compensation principles, but whether, given these job-related travel expectations, the employee’s conduct at the time of the accident was sufficiently related to the employer’s business to fall within the common-law “scope of employment.” The majority concluded that, on this record, reasonable minds could differ—and that the issue therefore belonged to a jury rather than the court. Thus, the circuit court’s grant of summary judgment was reversed.

The Dissent: Commuting Is Commuting

Justice Wood, joined by Justices Hiland and Bronni, would have affirmed. The dissent takes a hard-line view: whatever the worker’s travel patterns, and however remote the jobsite, Conboy was commuting—and commuting, in the dissent’s view, is categorically personal.

This is precisely where doctrinal slippage appears. The dissent describes commuting as outside the “course of employment,” without acknowledging that course of employment is a workers’ compensation term of art, serving a different purpose from tort law’s scope of employment inquiry. Workers’ compensation uses the phrase to determine coverage for injured employees; tort law uses scope of employment to determine when an employer should be held vicariously liable for conduct arguably beyond the employer’s control.

That conflation is not unique to this case, but it drives the dissent’s reasoning here.

Why Borrowing Doctrines Across Systems Is So Tempting—and So Risky

The parallels between workers’ compensation and respondeat superior are real. Both bodies of law ask whether the worker’s conduct is attributable to the employer. Both have developed exceptions for travel-related situations, including the “special mission” and “furnishing one’s own vehicle” doctrines. But the purposes of the two systems are profoundly different.

• Workers’ compensation expands coverage to ensure protection for employees.
• Respondeat superior limits liability unless the employee’s conduct is sufficiently tied to the employer’s business.

Borrowing a doctrine crafted to expand compensability and applying it to expand tort liability is not a neutral translation. In Louisiana’s Crawford v. Tran decision (cited above), the court adopted the “special mission” exception to impose vicarious liability on an employer—not to support a worker’s compensability claim. Arkansas resisted that path in Skala, though not without some doctrinal tremors.

The majority tried to police the boundary, criticizing the circuit court for importing workers’ compensation doctrine. The dissent repeated the same conflation. And in the background, the fact pattern in Skala—remote worksites, employer-influenced travel, employee-furnished vehicle—maps uncannily onto the workers’ compensation “own conveyance” doctrine, even though tort law has no formal category by that name.

In short, Skala reminds us that the gravitational pull between these two systems remains strong—and that distinguishing their purposes remains essential.

Closing Comment

The Arkansas Supreme Court’s decision in Skala does not resolve the question whether Conboy was acting within the scope of his employment. It simply holds that the answer cannot be given as a matter of law on the summary-judgment record. A jury must decide. But the deeper teaching of the case is doctrinal: workers’ compensation concepts—especially travel doctrines—are not plug-and-play tools in tort law. Their purposes diverge, and treating them as interchangeable invites analytical confusion.

Louisiana’s Crawford case, Arkansas’s Skala decision, and the doctrinal architecture discussed at some length in Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 15.05 all point to the same thing: courts remain drawn to “travel doctrines”developed in workers’ compensation, even as they struggle to maintain the conceptual distinctions necessary within tort. That tension is unlikely to disappear, and cases like Skala will continue to illuminate it.