Kentucky: Divided Court Says Injury While Retrieving iPad Was Compensable

In a divided decision, the Court of Appeals of Kentucky affirmed an award of workers’ compensation benefits to a worker who fell while returning to her parked vehicle at the end of the day, after she had returned to her office to retrieve an employer-issued iPad from her office. The majority found the injury was not barred by the going and coming rule. The worker originally had safely made her way to her vehicle and intended to leave for home. Realizing that she had left her iPad in her office and feeling that she might want to utilize it for work that evening, she returned to her office, retrieved the tablet, and then fell as she approached her vehicle. The dissent pointed out that if the worker had originally placed her iPad in her briefcase, left her office, and then fallen in the parking lot, her injuries would not have been covered; the majority had admitted as much. From the dissent’s point of view, the fact that it was her second trip to the vehicle should not have changed the situation. 

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 Professional Fin. Servs. v. Workers’ Comp. Bd. (Gordon), 2018 Ky. App. LEXIS 181 (June 8, 2018)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 13.01.

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