Texas: Remote Worker’s Injury Traveling From Motel to Work Site Not Barred by Going and Coming Rule

A divided Supreme Court of Texas affirmed a determination that an employee was acting in the course and scope of his employment when he died in an automobile accident while traveling to a job site located some 40 miles from a motel where he as staying. Noting that the going and coming rule applied in Texas, that ordinarily travel to a work site and back home were not within the employment, the majority held that the relationship between the employee’s travel and his employment was so close that it could fairly be said that the injury originated in the work of his employer. Moreover, because the employer furnished and paid for the employee’s transportation, the statutory exclusion in Tex. Lab. Code Ann. § 401.011(12)(A) did not apply. The employee here had been assigned to work at a remote job site. While he was not paid for travel time, he was given a per diem for lodging and food expenses and was supplied with a company vehicle to travel from his motel to the work site. The majority also noted that the deceased employee was transporting two other workers to the site when the accident occurred.

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 Seabright Ins. Co. v. Lopez, 2015 Tex. LEXIS 553 (June 12, 2015) [2015 Tex. LEXIS 553 (June 12, 2015)]

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 14.01 [14.01]

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