Massachusetts: Business Owner’s Fatal Auto Accident Did not Arise Out of Employment

An appellate court in Massachusetts affirmed a determination by the Massachusetts Industrial Accident Reviewing Board that denied death benefits to the family of a business owner who sustained fatal injuries in an automobile accident as he traveled to check on a real estate investment in New Hampshire. The deceased, who was a principal in two separate businesses, one in New Hampshire, which maintained a workers’ compensation insurance policy on its employees, including the deceased, and another business, originally a restaurant, in New Hampshire. The New Hampshire business had earlier failed and the deceased had decided to sell the real estate. He had been on his way to meet a realtor and a prospective buyer when the accident occurred. The appellate court agreed that the fatal accident did not arise out of and in the course of the Massachusetts business.

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 Yang’s Case, 2019 Mass. App. LEXIS 102 (Aug. 13, 2019)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 68.01.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see