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Stringer v. Minnesota Vikings Football Club11/17/2005
of a personal duty. We see no reason to treat them separately. See Gunnett v. Girardier Bldg. and Realty Co., 70 S.W.3d 632, 638 (Mo. Ct. App. 2002).
We did not use the specific phrase "course and scope of employment" in either Dawley or Wicken; therefore, it is important at this point in our analysis that we elaborate on why we conclude that a personal duty necessarily contemplates that the co-employee must have acted outside of his or her course and scope of employment. In Wicken, we said a co-employee does not owe a personal duty based on a "general administrative responsibility for some function of his employment without more." Wicken, 527 N.W.2d at 98. We also stated that the DNR permit application in Wicken "was an administrative activity required as an integral part of [the manager's] employment obligations." Id. at 99. "Scope of employment" is defined as "the field of action in which a servant is authorized to act in the master-servant relationship." Black's Law Dictionary 1374 (8th ed. 2004). "Course of employment" refers to " vents that occur or circumstances that exist as a part of one's employment; esp., the time during which an employee furthers an employer's goals through employer-mandated directives." Id. at 378. Under the workers' compensation system, we have said that course of employment refers to the time, place, and circumstances of the incident causing the injury . Gibberd by Gibberd v. Control Data Corp., 424 N.W.2d 776, 780 (Minn. 1988).
We conclude that, while we did not use the specific phrase, "course and scope of employment" under the facts of either Dawley or Wicken, we articulated essentially the same concept when we spoke of the co-employee's "administrative activity required as an integral part of * * * employment obligations" or "administrative obligations incident to work responsibilities," Wicken, 527 N.W.2d at 99, and the "general administrative responsibility for some function of * * * employment," Dawley, 304 Minn. at 456, 231 N.W.2d at 557. We discussed the specific term "administrative" in Dawley and Wicken because the facts of both of those cases involved administrative responsibilities of co-employee managers. But our stated concerns in Wicken included that the co-employee not be held personally liable for decisions he was required and authorized to make as part of his job and that we "[maintain] the integrity of the compromise between employers and employees" under workers' compensation. Wicken, 527 N.W.2d at 99. Thus, the relevant issue is not whether the personal duty requires us to explain the meaning of the term "administrative," but rather whether any articulation of what constitutes a personal duty would upset the purposes of the workers' compensation system to fairly and fully compensate the meritorious injury claim. See Dawley, 304 Minn. at 455-56, 231 N.W.2d at 557; Wicken, 527 N.W.2d at 99; see also Franke v. Fabcon, Inc., 509 N.W.2d 373, 376 (Minn. 1993). Acting within the course and scope of employment is what brings the co-employee within the protection of the workers' compensation system.
We acknowledge the concerns raised by the dissent. We share some of these concerns and have considered them carefully; but we conclude that the dissent's analysis ultimately fails because it does not sufficiently answer the question on personal duty that is before us in light of our case law and the purposes of the workers' compensation scheme. When the dissent asserts that a course and scope of employment test is an incorrect reading of personal duty, it relies significantly on Behr v. Soth, 170 Minn. 278, 212 N.W. 461 (1927), a pre-1979 legislative amendment case that does not discuss personal duty. In Behr, we held that co-employees are included
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