New Jersey: Township Librarian May Sue in Tort For Parking Lot Injuries

A New Jersey appellate court held that a parking lot that was owned by a township and adjacent to a township library was nevertheless not part of the library's "premises," for purposes of a civil action filed by a township librarian and her husband after they were struck in the parking lot by a township employee who was operating a snowplow. Since the lot was not considered part of the premises, the librarian's injuries did not arise out of and in the course of the employment, agreed the appellate court. Construing New Jersey's "premises rule," the court stressed that the librarian was "off the clock" at the time of her injury, workers at the library were given no specific instructions as to where in the lot they should park, and the parking lot was open to the general public. Under New Jersey law, the employee did not exercise sufficient control over the lot so as to make it part of the employee-librarian's "premises." Her tort action, therefore, was not barred by the exclusive remedy provisions of the Workers' Compensation Act.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the co-Editor-in-Chief and 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 Lapsley v. Township of Sparta & Sparta Pub. Library, 2021 N.J. Super. LEXIS 14 (Jan. 29, 2020)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 13.04.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see

Sign up for the free LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation enewsletter at www.lexisnexis.com/wcnews.