Georgia: Dangerous Railway Crossing Works to Extend Employer’s Premises Beyond Leased Building

A Georgia appellate court held that a worker’s fatal injuries arose out of and in the course of his employment where the vehicle the worker was driving was struck by an oncoming train as the worker crossed railway tracks along a short access road used to gain access to the employer’s premises. The employer leased the premises under a rental agreement that granted the employer access to a nearby state highway via the short entrance road. The access road was the only means of egress to the employer’s premises. The ALJ determined that the widow’s death benefits claim was compensable since the worker had no alternative route to take to get to the building, the entrance road was part of the business premises, his arrival was during a reasonable time before his appointed shift time, and the employer had control over the entrance road pursuant to the lease. The Board reversed, holding that because the worker had not arrived at work prior to the accident, the ingress/egress rule did not apply. The Board concluded that the ingress/egress exception only applied to accidents that occurred on the employer’s premises; here, the employer did not exclusively own, maintain, or control the entrance road upon which the worker was traveling. The appellate court disagreed. At the time of the accident, the worker had arrived at what amounted to the employer’s premises. That the railway intersected what was essentially a driveway to the business did not remove the case from the ambit of the ingress/egress rule.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is a leading commentator and expert on the law of workers’ compensation.

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance. Bracketed citations link to lexis.com.

See Bonner-Hill v. Southland Waste Sys., Inc., 2014 Ga. App. LEXIS 777 (Nov. 18, 2014) [2014 Ga. App. LEXIS 777 (Nov. 18, 2014)]

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 13.01 [13.01]

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

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