United States Fifth Circuit

In an interlocutory appeal from the district court's partial refusal to compel arbitration of a personal injury action, the order is affirmed where: 1) it was not contradictory for plaintiff to receive workers' compensation under a standard that allows recovery solely because her employment created the "zone of special danger" which led to her injuries, yet claim, in the context of arbitration, that the allegations the district court deemed non-arbitrable did not have a "significant relationship" to her employment contract; 2) simply living in employer-provided housing does not mean an injury occurring in that housing necessarily arises "out of and in the course of employment"; and 3) there was evidence that defendant did not consider the barracks in which the injury occurred to be a "workplace".

Appellate Information

• Decided 09/18/2009
• Published 09/18/2009

Judges

• RHESA HAWKINS BARKSDALE, Circuit Judge:, Before BARKSDALE, DeMOSS and STEWART, Circuit Judges.

Court

• United States Fifth Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellant:
  
• Lannie Todd Kelley, Kelly Law Firm, Paul F. Waldner, Vickery, Waldner & Mallia, Houston, TX, Andre M. Mura, John Vail (argued), Center for Constitutional Lit., Washington, DC, for Jones.


• For Appellees:
  
• Shadow M. Sloan, W. Carl Jordan (argued), Vinson & Elkins, L.L.P., Houston, TX, for Defendants-Appellants.