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Custer v. Hartford Insurance Co.8/23/2005
salesman driving a demonstrator under the strict rules of the employer, as in Hill v. Royal Gate Dodge, 887 S.W.2d 640, 641 (Mo. App. 1994). Nor does it involve a demonstrator car used "strictly for business purposes," as in Reece v. Neal Chevrolet & Universal Underwriters Insurance Co ., 912 S.W.2d 599, 601 (Mo. App. 1995).
There was no evidence presented at the hearing as to the employer's purpose in providing the car. Perhaps, for all we know, the provision of the vehicle in this case was simply a form of additional compensation to a valuable employee. We have no information from which the Commission could have concluded in these circumstances that the use of the company car placed the claimant in the course of his employment. Whether the employee was driving home from work, going to work, or was engaged in a shopping errand to the store, the use of the company car does not place him in the course of his employment. On the other hand, when the claimant was driving to a customer relations event for his employer during the work day, he was "in the course of his employment" regardless of who owned the car he was driving. The ownership of the car is a classic "red herring."
Bear v. Anson Implement, Inc., 976 S.W.2d 553 (Mo. App. 1998), relied upon by the employer in this case, was resolved in accordance with the plain language of the statute although the court also discussed the "going and coming rule." In Bear, the employee was released from his regular work early to go to a medical appointment for a work-related injury. He attended his 5:00 PM employer-authorized medical appointment, which extended past the regular work hours. On his way home from the medical center (which was not his normal worksite), his vehicle was struck by another vehicle that crossed the highway center line. Id . at 555. Thus, the injury had a "positional risk" relationship to the work. That is, if it had not been for the original work-related injury, he would not have been going home at the later hour on the route in question. It was because of the work that he was driving on the highway at that precise time in the evening traffic.
This court in Bear, however, found that the claimant was not engaged in the course of his employment at the time. The court said that it was not sufficient that the work "simply furnished an occasion for an injury," or that the work "caused him to be at the place where it happened." Id . at 556-57. The employee was finished with his work-related activities for the day. He was not going back to work. He was free to go home or wherever he wished for his own purposes. Id . at 558. He was not where his employment required him to be to perform his employment. Bear accords with a normal, everyday understanding of the phrase "in the course of employment." See also Snowbarger v. M.F.A. Cent. Co-op., 349 S.W.2d 224, 226 (Mo. banc 1961) (auto accident while en route to see his family doctor for work-related medical treatment; held not in the course of employment). Had the claimant spoken to a family member or friend on the phone just after leaving the golf course, and had he been asked, "are you still at work," he would not have answered in the affirmative.
Just as this court did in Bear, we should apply the plain and ordinary meaning of the phrase in question. Our attempt to liberally construe the phrase with a view to the public welfare does not require or justify going beyond the plain and ordinary meaning. It does not permit us to say that the act of driving home from a golf course some 30 or 40 miles from the claimant's home in his own metropolitan area -- not an extraordinary distance within the area -- is "in the course of" his employment. To reach that conclusion wou
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