Missouri: Parking Lot Injury Covered In Spite of Fact That Employer Did Not Own It

A Missouri appellate court affirmed an award of workers’ compensation benefits to an employee who sustained a severe knee injury when he slipped and fell on ice and snow in a parking lot near his employer’s premises. Acknowledging that the employer did not own the parking lot, the court nevertheless agreed with the Commission that it “controlled” the lot since, under the terms of a lease arrangement, it had the exclusive use of the area. Noting that on occasion, the employer had required non-employees to remove their vehicles, the area could be considered the employer’s “extended premises.” Acknowledging also that an injury isn’t compensable merely because it occurred at work, the court agreed that the risk or hazard faced by the employee was not snow and ice in general throughout the community, but rather the condition of that specific parking lot. The evidence established that the employee was exposed to the hazard of slipping on the ice on the employer’s extended south parking lot premises only while he was coming to work or going from work; there was no evidence to suggest that he was exposed to the hazard of falling on ice in the south lot in non-employment life.

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 Scholastic, Inc. v. Viley, 2014 Mo. App. LEXIS 1207 (Oct. 28, 2014) [2014 Mo. App. LEXIS 1207 (Oct. 28, 2014)]

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 13.04 [13.04]

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