Ohio: Flight Attendant Does Not Recover Benefits for Layover Injury

An airline flight attendant, who was based in Ohio, did not sustain an injury arising out of and in the course of her employment when, during a layover, she fell on a public sidewalk in New York City as she returned to an inn after walking to a nearby restaurant for dinner. The Ohio appellate court acknowledged that, under a line of Ohio cases, employees who travel regularly for work and who are injured away from the workplace during an employment-related trip are generally entitled to benefits unless the injury occurred while the employee was on a personal errand. The court added that the Supreme Court of Ohio had held that the decisions in these sorts of cases were very fact specific. Evidence indicated the flight attendant’s normal wage was $19.07 per hour and that she was guaranteed 72 hours each month. She was entitled to an additional $1.60 per hour from the time she left her base city until she returned home. The additional amount was designed to help with expenses, including food, while she traveled. During “rest” periods within a given excursion, she only was paid the $1.60 per hour. Here the employer had no control over the flight attendant at the time of her injury; it could not require her to eat at any specific location. There was insufficient connection between her work and the injury to award compensable benefits.

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.

See Osten v. Bureau of Workers’ Comp., 2017-Ohio-9315, 2017 Ohio App. LEXIS 5785 (Dec. 29, 2017)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 25.03.

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