Iowa: Occasional Work at Home Does Not Create Dual Employment Premises

In a case of first impression in Iowa, a state appellate court held that catching up on occasional work at home or completing tasks at home that could be completed at the employer’s premises is an insufficient basis to find that an employee had dual employment premises. Accordingly where a mental health therapist/social worker died as a result of injuries sustained in an automobile accident that occurred as she drove from her home in Sioux City to her workplace in Onawa, her survivors’ workers’ compensation death benefits claim was barred by the going and coming rule. The court added that the employer never directed the deceased employee to work from home. She never saw clients at her home. The employer provided no equipment for her home, nor did it pay mileage or other expenses associated with the deceased employee’s commute.

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. Bracketed citations link to lexis.com.

See Seaman v. Burgess Health Ctr., 2015 Iowa App. LEXIS 916 (Oct. 14, 2015) [2015 Iowa App. LEXIS 916 (Oct. 14, 2015)]

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 16.10 [16.10]

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

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