New Jersey: Slip and Fall in Elevator Lobby of Multi-Tenant Office Building is Not Compensable

In an unpublished opinion, a New Jersey appellate court held that an employee who slipped and fell in front of a ground floor elevator in a multi-tenant office building while on her way to her upper-floor office did not suffer a compensable injury under the states Workers’ Compensation Act; her injury did not arise from the course of employment and was not compensable pursuant to the premises rule, N.J. Stat. Ann. § 34:15-36. The court indicated the core issue was whether the area in front of the elevator was under the employer’s control such that the employee had arrived at the employer’s place of employment when she was injured. The court observed that the employee’s employer was one of five tenants in the office building and had no control over the lobby area where the employee fell. The evidence showed the landlord monitored the flow of workers and visitors within the building and the employer did not direct the employee to use the route she took to get to her tenth-floor office.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is a leading commentator and expert on the law of workers’ compensation.

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance. Bracketed citations link to lexis.com.

See Burke v. Investors Bank, 2015 N.J. Super. Unpub. LEXIS 552 (Mar. 16, 2015) [2015 N.J. Super. Unpub. LEXIS 552 (Mar. 16, 2015)]

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 13.04 [13.04]

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

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