Hospital crosswalk injury not compensable: Appeals court

A laboratory worker who slipped and fell on ice while crossing a street from a parking lot to a hospital did not suffer a compensable injury under Virginia’s workers compensation law, as the woman failed to prove that she could not have used a different entrance to the facility, the Virginia Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday.

As documented in Audra L. Poole v. Quest Diagnostics Inc., Audra Poole suffered a wrist injury that required three surgeries and requested a lifetime medical award and temporary total disability. She appealed the Workers’ Compensation Commission’s decision denying her benefits over its determination that there was no exception to the state’s coming and going rule that typically bars injuries that occur while a person is arriving or leaving the workplace. The commission also said that the “extended premises doctrine” was inapplicable to the public parking lot and the public-owned crosswalk to the hospital.

The commission explained that exceptions to the coming and going rule did not apply because Ms. Poole presented “insufficient evidence for us to find that she was injured while coming to work on a route that was the sole and exclusive means of ingress and egress.” The commission also determined that the extended premises doctrine did not apply because Ms. Poole “failed to prove that the crosswalk on which she fell can be considered the employer’s extended premises.”

In affirming, the appeals court agreed that neither the exception nor the doctrine applied, writing that the commission’s reasoning is “supported by case law.”