Texas: Court Utilizes Going and Coming Rule to Bar Recovery in Tort Action

A Texas appellate court held the so-called “going and coming” rule in the workers’ compensation sphere could be utilized to bar recovery against an employer in a civil action that alleged the employer’s employee was negligent in the operation of his motor vehicle as the employee drove home at the end of the workday. The employer was a rental car operation and allowed the employee to drive a car from the rental lot to and from his home and also to drive a vehicle on weekends and on his off-duty days for personal use. The employee was permitted to choose any vehicle on the lot, and he did not drive the same vehicle every day. At trial, a jury found that the employee was acting within the course and scope of his employment at the time of the accident and awarded the plaintiff substantial damages. The employer appealed. The appellate court reversed, finding that it was uncontroverted that the employee was on his way home from work with an intermediate stop to pick up dinner for himself at a burger restaurant when the accident occurred. The employee was not traveling in the performance of regular or specifically assigned duties for the benefit of his employer. The court concluded that as a matter of law, the employee was not in the course and scope of his employment at the time of the collision. The employer could not be liable.

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 State ex rel. EAN Holdings, LLC v. Arce, 2021 Tex. App. LEXIS 8354 (Oct. 14, 2021)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 15.05.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see

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