Utah: Worker Awarded Benefits for Unexplained Fall in Parking Lot

Quoting Larson's Workers' Compensation Law, both on the general issue of causation (§ 46.03) and also regarding the doctrine of unexplained falls (§ 7.04), the Supreme Court of Utah affirmed an award of benefits to a worker who sustained serious injuries to her foot in a parking lot fall adjacent to the employer's facility. The employer did not own nor exclusively control the parking lot, although there were a number of spaces in the lot that had been designated for the employer's employees. The Court stressed that the term "premises" was not an artificial construct; it did not end at the exterior walls of the employer. The lot was used by employees with the implied consent of the employer. It was, for practical purposes, a part of the employer's premises and the worker's unexplained injury, therefore, arose out of and in the course of the employment.

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 Intercontinental Hotels Grp. v. Utah Labor Comm’n, 2019 UT 55, 2019 Utah LEXIS 155 (Sept. 4, 2019)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 7.04.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see