What is the Doctrine of Personal Comfort?
Is being hit by a car while crossing the street to buy cigarettes covered by workers compensation? Yes, if the injured worker/pedestrian was on a break.
When a woman met her mother in another area to obtain some feminine hygiene products from her and was injured getting there, was that a workers compensation injury? Yes again.
The reason these instances were covered under workers compensation is because they fall under the doctrine of personal comfort.
Ordinarily an injury must occur in the course of employment and be related to the job (arise out of the performance of one's duties). But there is an exception. An employee is allowed to attend to their own "personal comfort" when on a break or to use the restroom.
"Employees who, within the time and space limits of their employment, engage in acts which minister to personal comfort do not thereby leave the course of employment, unless the … method chosen is so unusual and unreasonable that the conduct cannot be considered an incident of the employment.– Larsen's Workers Compensation Law (chapter 21, section 5-5)
Under these conditions, referred to as the "personal comfort" doctrine, an employee's injuries would be fully compensable. Thus, an employee who injured himself helping a fellow employee dislodge a snack from a vending machine during breaktime was covered. As was a worker injured while playing Frisbee during a lunch break — because doing so was "an accepted regular and normal" activity during lunch breaks at that firm.
On the other hand, a worker helping guests at a picnic was dancing with guests with the employer's permission and injured his leg. While the injury occurred during the course of his employment, it did not arise out of his employment because he was hired to set up the picnic and serve food, not dance with guests.
How to Minimize Incidents Involving the Personal Comfort Doctrine
- Investigate the location of the accident, including determining if there were defects that might have caused the accident.
- Determine if there were any policies prohibiting the conduct that caused the injury. Were the rules being followed; if not, did the employer in any way acquiesce to behavior that resulted in the injury in contradiction to the rules?
- Designate someone in the organization who has sole authority to permit deviations from company policy on any matters concerning prohibited personal conduct.
- Include a written policy as part of the employee handbook that limits acceptable employee actions while on breaks and restricts horseplay and other deviations from permissible conduct.
- Require employees to sign a receipt that they have read and understand these company policies.
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