Arkansas: Worker Injured While Retrieving Lunch is Denied Benefits

Employing the restrictive rule in Arkansas, which excludes workers’ compensation benefits for injuries “inflicted upon the employee at a time when employment services were not being performed” [see Ark. Code Ann. § 11-9-102(4)(B)(iii)], a state appellate court affirmed a Commission decision that had denied the claim of a housekeeping worker who was injured when she slipped and fell on a wet floor in the lobby of her employer. Observing that the Commission had not been convinced by claimant’s argument that she had been picking up trash at the time of the incident and that instead, the Commission had found credible other evidence that the housekeeper was on her way out of the building to retrieve her lunch, which was in her private vehicle in the parking lot, the appellate court concluded substantial evidence supported the denial of the worker’s claim.

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 Rodriguez-Gonzalez v. Jamestown Health & Rehab, 2019 Ark. App. 530, 2019 Ark. App. LEXIS 575 (Nov. 13, 2019)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 3.01.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see

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