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Injury from scanning employee parking pass not compensable

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Injury from scanning employee parking pass not compensable

The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York on Thursday ruled in a divided decision that a woman’s injuries sustained while stopping to scan her employee parking pass while driving into her employer’s building is not compensable.

A Workers’ Compensation Law Judge found that Shelley Grover sustained a work-related injury to her left shoulder while extending her arm to scan her pass at the kiosk at the gated entrance to the parking garage, according to documents in Matter of the Claim of Shelly A. Grover v. State Insurance Fund, Workers’ Compensation Board. However, on appeal, the state Workers’ Compensation Board ruled that the incident did not arise out of and in the course of her employment, according to court documents filed in the State Supreme Court’s 3rd Department in Albany, New York.

The record provided no details on the employer, the location of the garage, nor the timing of injury.

The latest ruling was split 3-2, with the majority affirming the board ruling, finding that “in concluding that claimant's injury was not compensable, the Board found that the parking garage was utilized by members of the public, as well as other businesses located within the same building as the employer. The Board further noted that the employer did not own or maintain the garage. These facts, which the Board credited, lead to the conclusion that the employer did not extend its premises to the area where claimant's injury occurred.”

 The two judges dissenting wrote in the ruling that “the privately-owned parking garage was located underneath the building where claimant worked, and her office was accessible by elevator from inside the garage.

“Although some portions of the garage were open to the public, claimant used a section available exclusively to employees located in the building by use of a parking pass,” the dissenting judges wrote. “Significantly, the employer assigned claimant to a parking space in the garage and provided a parking pass to her at no charge, thus affirmatively encouraging claimant to park there. There is thus ‘a sufficient nexus in time and place between the parking facility, the use of which was fully endorsed by the employer, and the employer's premises to render claimant's accident compensable as occurring within the precincts of her employment,’” they wrote, citing similar cases.

 

 

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