Intoxicated employee entitled to workers' comp for injuries sustained when employer was driving him home

Law Reporter, Dec 2001

Intoxicated employee entitled to workers' comp for injuries sustained when employer was driving him home.

Vaughan's Landscaping & Maint. v. Dodson, 546 S.E.2d 437 (Va. 2001).

The Virginia Supreme Court held that an employee was entitled to workers' compensation benefits for injuries he sustained in a car accident when his employer was transporting him from work, even though he and his employer had stopped to drink alcohol and visit with friends, and the employee was intoxicated at the time of the accident.

Here, Dodson worked for a landscaping business owned by Vaughan. After Vaughan and Dodson had finished their day of work, Vaughan was driving Dodson to the county where both lived, when Vaughan stopped to buy beer and wine. The two men began drinking, then stopped again to visit friends, where they pitched horseshoes and continued to drink alcohol. When they resumed the trip, Dodson was intoxicated. As he was driving, Vaughan became distracted and sideswiped a tree, which resulted in arm injuries to Dodson.

Dodson filed a workers' comp claim and the workers' compensation commission awarded benefits. An intermediate appellate court reversed, finding that Dodson's injury did not occur in the course of his employment because his intoxication was unrelated to any work-related duty and rendered him incapable of performing his job duties. On rehearing, however, the intermediate appellate court affirmed the commission's decision.

Affirming, the state high court noted that if an employer furnishes an employee transportation to and from work, injuries that occur during such transportation are compensable as arising out of and in the course of employment. The court rejected Vaughan's argument that the period of drinking and pitching horseshoes was such a deviation from the business purpose of the ride home that it effectively broke the nexus to the employment before the return trip home was resumed.

The court distinguished case law stating that if an employee so materially deviates from the work-related purposes of his trip as to constitute a frolic of his own, any accident occurring at that time is not considered to have occurred in the course of employment. Here, the court emphasized, it was not considering an employee's deviation, but whether the employer's resumption of the trip to transport Dodson from work was a trip in the course of his employment. In taking Dodson to the location he specified, Vaughan was fulfilling his agreement as Dodson's employer to provide transportation to and from work, the court said. Thus, the court held, Dodson's injuries arose out of and in the course of his employment.

Dodson's Counsel

Jerry O. Talton Jr., Front Royal, Va.