STEPHANIE NICOLE BOWMAN v. RAYBURN CORRECTIONAL CENTER (2025)

In this workers’ compensation case, Beau Bowman was killed in a traffic accident on his way home from an August 8, 2023 training meeting at his place of employment, B.B. Rayburn Correctional Center (BBRCC) in Angie, Louisiana. His widow, Stephanie Bowman, appeals a summary judgment rendered against her, and in favor of BBRCC, dismissing her claim for workers’ compensation benefits. After review, we affirm by summary disposition.

Under the Workers’ Compensation Act, employers are responsible for compensation benefits to employees only when the injury results from an accident “arising out of and in the course of his employment.” La. R.S. 23:1031(A); McLin v. Industrial Specialty Contractor Inc., 2002-1539 (La. 7/2/03), 851 So.2d 1135, 1139. Generally, injuries sustained by an employee while traveling to and from work are not considered to have occurred within the course and scope of his employment, and thus, are not compensable under the Workers’ Compensation Act. McLin, 851 So.2d at 1140; H. Alston Johnson, 13 Louisiana Civil Law Treatise, Workers’ Compensation Law and Practice § 168 (5th ed. December 2024 update). This rule, often called the “going-and-coming rule,” is premised on the theory that, ordinarily, the employment relationship is suspended from the time the employee leaves his work to go home until he resumes his work. McLin, 851 So.2d at 1140. The “going-and-coming rule” is, however, subject to various exceptions, only one of which has been asserted by Ms. Bowman. She argues that the training meeting at BBRCC constituted a “special mission” for BBRCC, and thus, Mr. Bowman's return home from that meeting was within the course and scope of his employment.

After a de novo review of the law and summary judgment evidence, we agree with the workers’ compensation judge's extensive written reasons: Mr. Bowman reported to his regular place of employment for the training meeting; the meeting was a regularly scheduled meeting that had been scheduled for several months; the evidence showed Mr. Bowman had completed his work, had left the workplace, was on his commute home on a public roadway; and, there is no genuine issue of material fact showing that he was a on special mission. Thus, we find no error in the trial court's judgment and attach its written reasons to this opinion. Accordingly, and in compliance with URCA, Rule 2-16.2(A)(5), we affirm, by summary disposition, the July 29, 2024 summary judgment in favor of B.B. Rayburn Correctional Center, dismissing Stephanie Bowman's claims with prejudice. We assess costs of the appeal to Stephanie Bowman.

AFFIRMED.

WRITTEN REASONS

This matter came before the court on Rayburn's Motion for Summary Judgment. On August 8, 2023, Beau Bowman was driving his personal motorcycle when he was in a motor vehicle accident at the intersection of Louisiana Highway 21 and Paige Road in Washington Parish, Louisiana. As a result of the accident, Mr. Bowman suffered injuries and passed away. Mr. Bowman's wife, Stephanie Bowman, filed a workers’ compensation suit, requesting death benefits, funeral expenses, medical expenses, penalties, attorney's fees, and costs. Rayburn asserts that at the time of the accident, Mr. Bowman was not in the course and scope of his employment; therefore, the workers’ compensation act does not provide a remedy for his death.

Carrie Hartzog is the Human Resources Supervisor at Rayburn. Ms. Hartzog has worked at Rayburn for 28 years and was the HR supervisor on August 8, 2023. Mr. Bowman was a correctional office at Rayburn. His title was Corrections Lieutenant, and his duties were as a dorm supervisor at the Rayburn prison. Rayburn paid Mr. Bowman for his regular work at the prison. Rayburn did not pay for his travel costs or expenses to travel to or from Rayburn. Rayburn did not provide a vehicle to Mr. Bowman. Rayburn did not pay Mr. Bowman for his time traveling to or from the work facility.

On Tuesday, August 8, 2023, Mr. Bowman was scheduled to report to Rayburn for a regularly scheduled mandatory supervisor training session. Blandon Smith, the Training and Development Program Manager at Rayburn, had scheduled and organized the meeting. The training session was a standard annual training on Rayburn's premises, the facility at which Mr. Bowman worked. The training was limited to Rayburn's premises. Mr. Bowman signed in at 7:26 a.m. and attended the session. At the conclusion of the training session, Mr. Bowman was free to leave Rayburn. Mr. Bowman signed out after completing the training session at 1:02 p.m. After leaving Rayburn, Mr. Bowman was in a motor vehicle accident off of Rayburn's premises and on a public roadway. At the time of the accident, Mr. Bowman had completed his work duties, attending the meeting, and he was not signed in at Rayburn. Rayburn was not paying him at the time of his accident.

Employers are responsible for compensation benefits to employees only when the injury results from an accident “arising out of and in the course of his employment.”¹

The requirement that an employee's injury occur “in the course of” employment focuses on the time and place relationship between the injury and the employment.2 An accident occurs in the course of employment when the employee sustains an injury while actively engaged in the performance of his duties during work hours, either on the employer's premises or at other places where employment activities take the employee.3 The requirement that an employee's injury “arise out of” the employment relates to the character or origin of the injury suffered by the employee and whether this injury was incidental to the employment.4

Generally, injuries sustained by an employee while traveling to and from work are not considered to have occurred within the course and scope of his employment, and thus, are not compensable under the Workers’ Compensation Act.5 This rule, often called the “going-and-coming rule,” is premised on the theory that, ordinarily, the employment relationship is suspended from the time the employee leaves his work to go home until he resumes his work.6

Furthermore, an employee's place of residence is a personal decision not directly controlled by the employer, and treating commuting time as part of the determination of course and scope of employment would remove manageable boundaries from the determination.7

With a few exceptions, the going and coming rule disallows workers compensation benefits to employees who are injured while traveling to or from work. The principle underlying the rule is that when the workday ends, so does the employee-employer relationship. That relationship doesn't resume until the worker goes back to work.⁸

The exceptions to the rule are:

1. If the accident occurs on the employer's premises;

2. If the employee was deemed to be on a specific mission or special mission for the employer;

3. If the employer had interested himself in the transportation of the employee as an incident to the employment agreement either by contractually providing transportation or reimbursing the employee for his travel expenses;

4. If the employee was doing work for his employer under circumstances where the employer's consent could be fairly implied;

5. If the employee was injured while traveling to and from one work site to another;

6. If the employee was injured in an area immediately adjacent to his place of employment and that area contained a distinct travel risk to the employee which is different than the risk to which the general traveling public is exposed (“the threshold doctrine”);9 or

7. If the operation of a motor vehicle was the performance of one of the duties of the employment of the employee.10

In determining whether the employee's conduct is employment-rooted, the court assesses several factors, including the payment of wages by the employer, the employer's power of control, the employee's duty to perform the particular act, the time place and purpose of the act in relation to service of the employer, the relationship between the employee's act and the employer's business, the benefits received by the employer from the act, the motivation of the employee for performing the act, and the reasonable expectation of the employer that the employee would perform the act.¹¹ Requiring “an employee to show up for work does not make transportation ‘incidental’ to the employment contract”.¹²

While courts nationally and in Louisiana have found travel to and from a meeting to be compensable, those cases have involved meeting venues which were outside of the employee's normal location of business.¹³ Several other cases have found traveling to and from a meeting non-compensable.¹⁴ The uniqueness of the off-site location is one of the factors which courts have used to classify the work as an employer “special mission”, bringing the accident within the course and scope of the employee's job. Louisiana courts have defined the special mission to be one where “an employee, having identifiable time and space limits on his employment, makes an off-premises journey which would normally not be covered under the usual going and coming rule.”¹⁵ The “journey may be brought within the course and scope of employment by the fact that the trouble and time of making the journey, or special inconvenience, hazard, or urgency of making it in the particular circumstances, is itself sufficiently substantial to be viewed as an integral part of the service itself.”¹⁶ In McLin, the Louisiana Supreme Court noted that one of the most important factors to proving the special mission exception for meetings is that the meeting “was conducted off-premises”. Thus, “travel was an indispensable part of attending the meeting. Under these circumstances, we readily conclude that the “time and trouble” or “inconvenience” of making the journey to the mandatory safety meeting was “sufficiently substantial to be viewed as an integral part of the service itself.”¹⁷ In this case, Mr. Bowman reported to his regular place of employment. The meeting was a regularly scheduled meeting which had been scheduled for several months. The evidence introduced demonstrated that Mr. Bowman was on his commute home after completing his day's work, and nothing showed that Mr. Bowman was on a special mission for the employer.

This tragic accident occurred after Mr. Bowman had completed his work, had left the workplace, and was on a public roadway that was not on or adjacent to the workplace. No evidence demonstrated Mr. Bowman met any of the exceptions that would bring this accident under the coverage of Louisiana's Workers’ Compensation Act. Accordingly, there are no material issues in dispute, and judgment is appropriate as a matter of law.

JUDGMENT READ, RENDERED AND SIGNED in Covington, Louisiana, this 29th day of July, 2024.

I respectfully concur. The majority provides that, after conducting a de novo review, it agrees with the trial court's extensive written reasons, attaches those written reasons to its opinion, and finds no error in the trial court's judgment. I write separately to point out that on de novo review of summary judgment, no deference is to be afforded to the trial court's underlying reasons for its judgment. King v. Allen Court Apartments II, 2015-0858 (La. App. 1st Cir. 12/23/15), 185 So. 3d 835, 839, writ denied, 2016-0148 (La. 3/14/16), 189 So. 3d 1069. For that matter, on de novo review, an appellate court also affords no deference to the legal standard or analysis applied by the trial court. Tucker v. Chatfield, 2023-0343 (La. App. 1st Cir. 11/9/23), 3 79 So. 3d 678, 684. Thus, I would not adopt the trial court's reasons, even though I might agree, as to do so ignores our directive that upon de novo review we are charged to conduct a separate review of summary judgments and reach our own conclusion.

I further note that here, within the facts which are material, there does not appear to be a genuine dispute. Thus, we are not called to weigh summary judgment evidence – an undertaking which is verboten in our jurisprudence. Instead, this decision turns on the application of law to those established facts. In that application, I agree with the majority that the judgment should be affirmed.

FOOTNOTES

1.   La. R.S. 23:1031; McLin v. Indus. Specialty Contractors, Inc., 851 So.2d 1135, 1139 (La. 2003); O'Regan v. Preferred Enterprises, Inc., 758 So.2d 124 (La. 2000); Mundy v. Department of Health and Human Resources, 593 So.2d 346 (La. 1992).

2.   Weber v. State, 635 So.2d 188 (La. 1994); Williams v. Regional Transit Authority, 546 So.2d 150 (La. 1989).

3.   Mundy, 593 So.2d at 349.

4.   Williams, 546 So.2d at 161.

5.   Stephens v. Justiss–Mears Oil Co., 312 So.2d 293 (La. 1975); W. Malone & H. Johnson, 13 Louisiana Civil Law Treatise—Workers Compensation § 168 (4th ed.2002).

6.   Phipps v. Bruno Const., 773 So.2d 826 (La. App. 3 Cir. 2000) citing Yates v. Naylor Industrial Services, Inc., 569 So.2d 616, 619 (La. App. 2d Cir.1990), writ denied, 572 So.2d 92 (La. 1991).

7.   Orgeron ex rel. Orgeron v. McDonald, 639 So.2d 224, 227 (La. 1994). McLin v. Indus. Specialty Contractors, Inc., 851 So.2d 1135, 1139-40 (La. 2003).

8.   where the Louisiana Supreme Court found “[b]ecause an employee usually does not begin work until he reaches his employer's premises, his going to and coming from work is generally considered outside the course of his employment unless he has a duty to perform en route.”

9.   Posey v. NOMAC Drilling Corp., 16 So. 3d 1211, 1217 (La. App. 2nd Cir. 2009); McLin v. Indus. Specialty Contractors, Inc., 851 So. 2d 1135, 1141 (La. 2003).

10.   McLin v. Indus. Specialty Contractors, Inc., 851 So. 2d 1135, 1141 (La. 2003).

11.   Orgeron on behalf of Orgeron v. McDonald, 639 So. 2d 224, 227 (La. 1994).

12.   Guidry v. Chevron U.S.A., Inc., 461 So.2d 625, 627 (La. App. 1st Cir. 1984)

13.   McLin v. Industrial Specialty Contractors, Inc., 851 So. 2d 1135, 1141 (La. 2003).

14.   Johnson v. Transit Management of SE LA, Inc., 239 So. 3d 973, 985 (La. App. 4th Cir. 2018); Ratliff v. Regional Extended Home Care Personnel Services, LLC, 134 So. 3d 129 (La. App. 3rd Cir. 2014); Washington v. Avondale Indus., Inc., 708 So. 2d 1254, 1256 (La. App. 4th Cir. 1998)

15.   McLin v. Industrial Specialty Contractors, Inc., 851 So. 2d 1135, 1141 (La. 2003), citing 1 Larson & Larson, supra, § 14.05.

16.   Id.

17.   McLin v. Indus. Specialty Contractors, Inc., 851 So.2d 1135, 1142 (La. 2003).

GREENE, J.

Miller, J. concurs with reasons.