Ohio: Business Owner’s Injuries in Commute to Informal Breakfast Meeting Found Compensable

An owner/employee’s decision to meet two subordinate employees for breakfast and a general business discussion meant that injuries sustained in a car accident on the way to the restaurant arose out of and in the course of the employment, in spite of the fact that the subject matter to be discussed was only tangential to the business of the employing company and likely would not have resulted in any work-related activity by anyone present at the meeting, held an Ohio court. Had he made it to the meeting, the owner/employee would have asked the other employees to perform services at a second, unrelated business also owned by the owner/employee. The appellate court held that the business meeting nevertheless served business-related purposes for the employing company, however, since the outside work would have given the subordinate employees additional income and would have eased the economic pain of the typical slow winter season experienced by the employing company.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Stewart v. Bear’s Tire, 2019-Ohio-1832, 2019 Ohio App. LEXIS 1914 (May 13, 2019)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 16.07

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see