Arkansas: Housekeeper’s Slip and Fall Found Compensable

A hotel housekeeper, who sustained injuries when she slipped on water on a stairway as she carried food she had found in one of the hotel rooms to a refrigerator in the laundry room, may recover workers’ compensation benefits, held an Arkansas court. The state’s rather restrictive statutory provision barring recovery if, at the time of the injury, employment services “are not being performed” [see Ark. Code Ann. § 11–9–102(4)(B)(iii)] was not fatal to the claim, indicated the court. While other housekeepers testified that carrying food to the laundry room refrigerator was not part of their duties, the injured housekeeper testified that she had never taken anything from a hotel room for her own personal use and indicated that her primary purpose in going to the laundry room was to get clean towels. It was within the Commission’s province to reconcile conflicting evidence and to determine the true facts. Substantial evidence supported the Commission’s finding that appellee was performing employment services at the time she was injured.

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 Best Western Inn v. Paul, 2014 Ark. App. 520, 2014 Ark. App. LEXIS 713 (Oct. 1, 2014) [2014 Ark. App. LEXIS 713 (Oct. 1, 2014)]

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 3.01 [3.01]

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

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