The warning “Beware of the Dog” is making employers fearful in a new way.
One downside of offering telecommuting privileges is injuries that occur while an employee is working from home. If an employee is injured at home while he or she is on a work-related task, he or she may be entitled to workers’ comp benefits. This raises concerns about employer lack of control.
An employer has a pretty good idea what the risks are at its own facilities. But how much does it know about the risks at a telecommuting employee’s home? And what control does the employer have over whether an employee trips over clutter in his or her house?
In the case Sandberg v. JC Penny, a home-based custom decorator stepped out of her home to get fabric samples from her garage, tripped over her dog and fractured her wrist. She applied for workers’ compensation benefits. At first she was rejected, but now she appears close to forcing her employer to pay them.
The Court of Appeals of Oregon overturned the worker’s compensation board and administrative law judge’s ruling that the injury did not arise from her employment.
The appeals court noted that she had to keep samples in her van to show to customers and had to store them in her garage because her employer gave her no other place to put them. She tripped over her dog while moving samples from her garage to her van; and the court deemed that was a work task. Therefore, the court concluded that Sandberg’s injury resulted from a risk that arose out of from employment, reversing the earlier decision.
The appeals court distinguished Sandberg’s situation from the non-work related accident at home in Halsey Shedd RFPD v. Leopard.
That case involved a firefighter slipping on gravel in his own driveway while on his way to church on Sunday. He was in the middle of answering a work-assigned pager, but the court nevertheless concluded that the slip-and-fall risk was not “distinctly associated” with being a firefighter. Rather, it existed whenever he walked from his house across his driveway, for whatever reason he might do it.
