Hankins v. Camel Manufacturing Co.

492 S.W.2d 212, 1973 Tenn. LEXIS 510
CourtTennessee Supreme Court
DecidedJanuary 2, 1973
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 492 S.W.2d 212 (Hankins v. Camel Manufacturing Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Tennessee Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Hankins v. Camel Manufacturing Co., 492 S.W.2d 212, 1973 Tenn. LEXIS 510 (Tenn. 1973).

Opinions

OPINION

JOHN W. WILSON, Special Justice.

This compensation case comes on appeal from the action of the Circuit Court of Knox County dismissing the petition for compensation filed against Camel Manufacturing Company and their insurance carrier, Aetna Casualty & Surety Company.

For convenience, the parties hereinafter will be referred to as employee and employer. The employee, forty years of age, had worked for the employer Camel Manufacturing Company for about eleven years, as a sewing machine operator. The employer’s place of business was in a building located at 329 South Central Avenue, Knoxville. The employer was the sole occupant of the building, which had three means of ingress and egress, front, side, and rear or alley. The offices of the employer were located on the first floor. Access to the third floor was by means of two elevators and the stairway. The clock used for employee to clock in and out was located on the first floor. At 9:00 A.M. and at 2:00 P.M. there was a rest period of ten minutes. There was a lunch period of thirty minutes, for which period the em-' ployees were not paid. The time for this lunch period was at 11:30 A.M., the beginning and ending of which was announced by the ringing of a bell. When the beginning of the lunch period was announced, a number of the employees would go to a lunch wagon parked in the alley to the rear of employer’s building and, in going to this lunch wagon to purchase hot lunches, they [213]*213would use, as a means of egress from the building, a door opening into the alley from employer’s building.

On February 3, 1971, when the bell rang for the lunch break, the employee left the third floor, where she worked, rode one of the two elevators to the first floor, then proceeded to the door of the building opening onto the alley, intending to purchase food from the vending truck and to return to eat lunch at her machine. The employee’s testimony is that, as she started through the door, she slipped on a concrete slab which had an accumulation of ice on it, causing her to fall out into the alley. After she fell, she was carried back into the mill and sent to the company doctor, who, in turn, referred her to.Dr. Vernon Young, an orthopedic surgeon, who admitted her to Fort Sanders Hospital, where her injury was diagnosed as a comminuted fracture of the right wrist and an open reduction and fixation with screw was performed at the fracture site.

Mr. T. P. Lawson, Vice President of employer, testified that he did not see employee fall but arrived as she was being picked up. It further appears from the testimony of Mr. Lawson that the employees were not forbidden to use any of the three entrances to the building; that the company uses a building across the alleyway and workmen and material cross back and forth over the alley between the two buildings and through the doorway where employee fell. Mr. Lawson further testified that where the employee says she fell was on the employer’s property and that the employer kept calcium fluoride at this back door during bad weather to apply at the doorway and alley when there was icing condition to aid their employees entering and exiting through the door. That on this particular morning it had been sleeting off and on and the door area had been salted earlier that morning. That, in addition to salt, sand was used in the alley because a drain in the alley causes water to collect.

Two employees of the employer testified on behalf of the employer. Witness Akins stated that he arrived after employee fell and helped pick her up. Witness Reed testified that he was walking out of the building at the same time the employee Hankins was, but did not see her slip, initially, but saw her sliding in the alley.

Mr. Lawson further testified that the employer had no connection with the lunch wagon, did not direct its employees on where to take lunch, nor what exits from the building its employees were to use in going to lunch.

In rebuttal, the employee testified that there were no white particles on the doorstep on the day she fell. It further appears that the employee had, at times, been sent from the building where she regularly worked to the building across the alley, to work, and, at which time, she used the door exiting on the alley.

The only assignment of error is that the learned trial judge erred in holding that the employee’s accidental injury did not arise out of and in the course of her employment.

We note in- a memorandum opinion filed by the trial court that he stated there were three doors to the public alley at the rear of the building. This is an inadvertence for there is no dispute about there being three entrances to the building, front, side and back, and there is no testimony that all entrances were from the alley. We note from the trial court’s memorandum filed, as follows:

“The Court does not make a finding of fact that the fall occurred on the premises or off because that is not necessary in deciding this case. Actually falling on the premises of an employer is not determinative. Travelers Ind. Company v. Charvis [221 Tenn. 593], 428 S.W.2d 797.
Can it be said petitioner was injured by an accident arising out of and in the [214]*214course of her employment. She was not at her duty station working, so there cannot be an injury arising out of and in the course of her employment unless there are exceptions which are applicable.
(The phrase) in the course of, refers to time and place, and arising out of, to cause or origin; an injury by accident to an employee is, in the course of employment if it occurred while he was performing a duty he was employed to do; and it is an injury ‘arising out of employment if caused by a hazard incident to such employment.’ Shubert v. Steelman, 214 Tenn. 102, 377 S.W.2d 940. See also Travelers Ins. Co. v. Evans [221 Tenn. 199], 425 S.W.2d 611.
There are exceptions to this general proposition of law when an employee is injured going to and from his work. Though no cases are cited, the Court feels that the same law applies to a lunch break going to have lunch or returning from lunch.
That law is as follows:
‘Injury by accident arising out of and in the course of employment means in so far as the compensability of the activities of the employee in going to and returning from work is concerned, that if the process of going to and from is furnished by the employer, or is required by the employer to be done in a certain manner or over a certain way, and this submits the employee to a definite special hazard, then in such event such accidents are compensable . . . ’ Smith v. Camel Mfg. Co. [192 Tenn. 670], 241 S.W.2d 771, at 774-5.
Does the petitioner come under this exception ?

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Bluebook (online)
492 S.W.2d 212, 1973 Tenn. LEXIS 510, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/hankins-v-camel-manufacturing-co-tenn-1973.