Holland v. Workmen's Compensation Appeal Board

586 A.2d 988, 137 Pa. Commw. 22
CourtCommonwealth Court of Pennsylvania
DecidedJanuary 31, 1991
Docket2274 C.D. 1989
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 586 A.2d 988 (Holland v. Workmen's Compensation Appeal Board) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Holland v. Workmen's Compensation Appeal Board, 586 A.2d 988, 137 Pa. Commw. 22 (Pa. Ct. App. 1991).

Opinion

NARICK, Senior Judge.

Lori Holland (Claimant) appeals from an order of the Workmen’s Compensation Appeal Board (Board) which reversed a referee’s decision granting her fatal claim petition and dismissed the petition for lack of jurisdiction. We affirm.

The parties stipulated that Claimant’s father, Willard Holland (Holland), was employed as a truck driver by Pep Boys (Employer). On October 15, 1986, Holland died as a result of injuries he sustained in an accident on the New Jersey Turnpike. At the time of his death, Holland was acting within the scope of his employment.

Scant evidence was introduced in this case. There were two brief hearings before a workmen’s compensation referee, devoted to the Claimant’s status as Holland’s dependent. The Employer submitted copies of Holland’s daily logs, along with a summary thereof. The referee granted the petition because he determined that Holland was a Pennsylvania domiciliary, a fact which is not contested, and that he spent a substantial part of his working time serving the Employer in Pennsylvania.

The sole issue 1 on appeal 2 is whether the Board erred in dismissing the petition under Section 305.2 of The Pennsylvania Workmen’s Compensation Act (Act), Act of June 2, *24 1915, P.L. 736, as amended, 77 P.S. § 411.2, which pertinently provides as follows:

(a) If an employe, while working outside the territorial limits of this State, suffers an injury on account of which he, or in the event of his death, his dependents, would have been entitled to the benefits provided by this act had such injury occurred within this State, such employe, or in the event of his death resulting from such injury, his dependents, shall be entitled to the benefits provided by this act, provided that at the time of such injury:
(1) His employment is principally localized in this State ...
(d) As used in this section:
(4) A person's employment is principally localized in this or another state when (i) his employer has a place of business in this or such other state and he regularly works at or from such place of business, or (ii) having worked at or from such place of business, his duties have required him to go outside of the State not over one year, or (iii) if clauses (1) and (2) foregoing are not applicable, he is domiciled and spends a substantial part of his working time in the service of his employer in this or such other state. (Emphasis added.)

The only evidence presented concerning the nature of Holland’s duties and where he performed them was contained in the copies of his daily logs Employer submitted. Although the parties draw widely varying conclusions from the information contained in the logs, it is not subject to question that the logs indicate that of the 195 trips Holland logged between October 1, 1985 and October 13, 1986, only five did not originate from the Employer’s Bridgeport, New Jersey location. The destination points listed on the logs indicate that Holland travelled to locations in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

*25 In reaching his conclusion that Claimant was entitled to compensation under the Act, the referee stated:

The jurisdiction question resolved [sic] for Claimant under Section 305.2(d)(4)(iii) even though (i) would deny Claimant jurisdiction. [T]he Pennsylvania Workmen’s Compensation Act favors the grant of jurisdiction. The words “if clauses (1) and (2) foregoing are not applicable” in (4) are read to mean not applicable to confer jurisdiction and therefore (iii) was relied upon.

Referee’s Conclusion of Law No. 2. Claimant argues that it was error for the Board to have reversed this conclusion. We disagree.

It is clear that the three clauses of Section 305.2(d)(4) are all separate and distinct methods for determining jurisdiction under the Act. Each clause is separated from the others by the disjunctive conjunction, “or.” In addition, subsection (iii) specifically limits its own application to those situations in which clauses (i) and (ii) do not apply.

Further, the purpose of Section 305.2(d)(4) is to establish a test for determining whether a person’s employment is “principally localized” in Pennsylvania or in another state. If the circumstances of the case indicate that a worker’s employment is principally localized in another state under either clause (i) or (ii) of the section, the inquiry ends and clause (iii) would not be relevant because one of the first two clauses applied.

This reading of the statute is consistent with our earlier decision in Loomer v. Workmen’s Compensation Appeal Board, 36 Pa.Commonwealth Ct. 591, 388 A.2d 788 (1978). In Loomer, the employee was a traveling salesman who was domiciled in Pennsylvania. He had worked for a New York company with no place of business in Pennsylvania. Despite the fact that the employee’s sales territory in Pennsylvania was much larger than his New York territory, and that he spent the majority of his time working in Pennsylvania, we nonetheless concluded that clause (i) of Section 305.2(d)(4) applied because the employer had no place of business in Pennsylvania and because the employee *26 regularly worked at or from the employer’s New York location. Since clause (i) applied, we rejected the employee’s widow’s argument that clause (iii) should govern.

Claimant here argues that both clauses (i) and (iii) apply and cites our more recent decision in Robbins v. Workmen’s Compensation Appeal Board (Mason-Dixon Line, Inc.), 91 Pa.Commonwealth Ct. 269, 496 A.2d 1349 (1985), wherein we found jurisdiction under the Act by virtue of the application of both clauses (i) and (iii). In light of Loomer and the foregoing discussion of the statutory language, we are of the opinion that the language of Robbins regarding the application of clause (iii) is dicta, since the Claimant’s employment was found to be “principally localized” in Pennsylvania under clause (i).

Claimant contends that clause (i) operates to confer jurisdiction because the Employer has stores in Pennsylvania and Claimant, by making deliveries to these stores, regularly worked “at” or “from” these locations. We must disagree.

Firstly, we cannot ignore the evidentiary deficiencies. While Claimant asserts in her brief that Holland made deliveries to Employer’s stores in Pennsylvania, there is no evidence of record to support this assertion. The only reference to a Pep Boys’ store in the record is the Claimant’s statement that her father visited her weekly when making a delivery to the Pep Boys’ store in Washington, D.C.

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Bluebook (online)
586 A.2d 988, 137 Pa. Commw. 22, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/holland-v-workmens-compensation-appeal-board-pacommwct-1991.