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Florida: Going and Coming Rule Does Not Bar Deputy Sheriff’s Claim Related to Vehicle Accident

July 03, 2014 (1 min read)

A Florida Deputy Sheriff, who came upon a tractor-trailer parked in the right-of-way and jutting into his lane, decided to take steps to protect other motorists from the hazard, but ran into the tractor-trailer before he could do so, his injuries were sustained in the course and scope of the employment; it made no difference that he was traveling to work at the time of the accident, held a Florida appellate court.  Acknowledging that because the deputy was driving his personal vehicle to work, an accident ordinarily would not be compensable, the court indicated “extraordinary intervening events” made the fact he was going to work irrelevant; the “going and coming” rule did not apply.  The situation required the deputy to intervene. At that moment, he was no longer "going to work" but instead was engaged in his "primary responsibility" which was "the prevention or detection of crime or the enforcement of the penal, criminal, traffic, or highway laws of the state," as the Levy County policy required.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is a leading commentator and expert on the law of workers’ compensation.

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance. Bracketed citations link to lexis.com.

See Levy County Sheriff’s Office v. Allen, 2014 Fla. App. LEXIS 9970 (June 30, 2014) [2014 Fla. App. LEXIS 9970 (June 30, 2014)]

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 14.05 [14.05]

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law.

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