Oregon: Board Should Have Considered Personal Comfort Doctrine in Parking Lot Injury

The personal comfort doctrine is part of the “course and scope inquiry,” and accordingly, it precedes any discussion of the going and coming rule, which applies when the worker has left the course and scope of the employment, held an Oregon appellate court recently. Accordingly, where a nurse manager tripped and fell on an uneven sidewalk adjacent to her employer’s parking lot as she returned to her duties following a 15-minute break, the Board should have considered her contention that her injuries were compensable. Citing Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the Court indicated the issue was whether the injured worker’s conduct was expressly or impliedly allowed by the employer.

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

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Mandes v. Liberty Mut. Holdings-Liberty Mut. Ins. (In re Mandes), 289 Ore. App. 268, 2017 Ore. App. LEXIS 1500 (Dec. 6, 2017)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 21.01.

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