Pennsylvania: Personal Comfort Doctrine Saves Injury Claim of Airport Employee

An airport employee, who was seriously injured when she flipped her luggage transport “tug” on the airport tarmac as she drove to a terminal area to meet her mother, whom the employee had summoned to deliver feminine hygiene products and other personal items, is entitled to workers’ compensation benefits under the personal comfort doctrine, held a Pennsylvania appellate court. Co-workers indicated that at the time of the accident, the employee was driving far too fast for the conditions. The vehicle flipped, the employee was ejected, and her leg was pinned beneath the heavy tug. Her leg later had to be amputated between the ankle and the knee. The appellate court noted that the employee had permission to drive over to meet her mother. It agreed with a workers’ compensation judge that the employee’s temporary departure from her duties did not remove her from the course of her employment.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is the co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Starr Aviation v. Workers’ Comp. Appeal Bd. (Colquitt), 2017 Pa. Commw. LEXIS 60 (Mar. 7, 2017)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 21.01.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see