Iowa: Modest Deviation from Ordinary Route Was Insufficient to Remove In-Home Healthcare Nurse From Her Employment

Where a registered nurse provided in-home health care services and sustained injuries in an automobile accident as she traveled to her first patient of the day, her injuries arose out of and in the course of the employment, held an Iowa appellate court. The fact that the nurse had made a slight deviation in her route in order that she could pick up her car from her mother’s house was not such a radical departure from the employment to defeat her claim for workers’ compensation benefits. Quoting Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the court stressed that where, as in the instant case, the worker was required to provide her own transportation, the employment scope was broadened so as to include the hazards of private motor travel.

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 Carroll Area Nursing Servs. v. Malloy, 2019 Iowa App. LEXIS 663 (July 24, 2019)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 15.05.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see