Hollis v. I-Stat Corporation

A-2110-00T5 (N.J. Super. App. Div. 2002) (Unpublished)

Opinion Date: January 18, 2002
Business Law
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WORKERS COMPENSATION—Picking up one’s paycheck on a non-work day is incidental to one’s employment and injuries incurred while doing so are compensable by workers compensation.

A machine operator was employed by a manufacturing company. She worked four days on and four days off. “She was paid every two weeks, and it was her practice to pick up her paycheck on an off-day.” On one such day, she came to pick up her paycheck and caught her shoe on a rug, causing her to fall and injure herself. She argued that since it was an off-day, she was not “reporting to work,” and her personal injury claim should not be limited by workers compensation law. The Court found such a restrictive interpretation of “‘reporting for work’ to be inconsistent with the overarching principle in workers compensation cases that the [Workers Compensation] Act ‘is remedial social legislation which should be liberally construed so that its beneficent purposes are accomplished.’” Even though this was an off-day, the employee with her employer’s implicit consent, was involved in conduct solely related to her employment. The employer also seemed to argue that the accident did not arise “out of her employment.” For an accident to arise out of employment, “the risk of an accident ‘must be of such nature’ that ‘it might have been contemplated by a reasonable person when entering employment, as incidental to [that employment].” The New Jersey Supreme Court has identified three categories of risks which may result in concluding that an accident arose out of employment: “risks ‘distinctly associated’ with employment, such as an employee’s fingers getting caught in a machine; ‘neutral’ risks, such as an employee getting struck by lightening while on the job; and risks that are ‘personal’ to an employee, such a non-work related heart attack suffered while on the job.” Applying those principles, the Court was “satisfied that the risk of tripping on a rug while picking up one’s paycheck, albeit on an off-day, was one which a reasonable person would have contemplated as incidental to the employment.”

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