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Chavis v. TLC Home Health Care8/16/2005
exception states that 'injuries received by an employee while traveling to or from his place ofemployment are usually not covered . . . unless the employer furnishes the means of transportation as an incident of the contract of employment.'" Dunn, 161 N.C. App. at 612, 589 S.E.2d at 155 (quoting Strickland v. King and Sellers v. King, 293 N.C. 731, 733, 239 S.E.2d 243, 244 (1977)). Even where the employer provides transportation to the employee, if the employee is on a personal errand neither the accident nor injury is compensable. In Dunn, an employee's injuries from a car accident were found not to be compensable by the Commission, even though he drove a company car and claimed he was going home for the sole intent and purpose of retrieving his employer's equipment for a job site. 161 N.C. App. at 613, 589 S.E.2d at 155.
Like any other employee who commutes to work at personal expense, Ms. Chavis was required by TLC Home Care to provide her own reliable transportation to maintain employment. Additionally, "' f the transportation is provided permissively, gratuitously, or as an accommodation, the employee is not within the course of employment while in transit.'" Hunt, 153 N.C. App. at 270, 569 S.E.2d at 679 (citing Robertson v. Construction Co., 44 N.C. App. 335, 337, 261 S.E.2d 16, 18 (1979)).
TLC Home Care assigned error to the Commission's finding of fact number four: " laintiff was reimbursed for mileage incurred from her home to the first patient, from one patient's home to the next, and then from her last patient to her home at the end of the day." The transcript shows and Ms. Chavis admitted that during the week of her accident, "the rule applicable to at TLC was that[she was] not reimbursed from home to first client." Ms. Chavis did not seek reimbursement for mileage from TLC Home Care from her home to her first patient on her reimbursement slip for the day of the accident. TLC Home Care did not substitute mileage reimbursement for wages, but gave Ms. Chavis a mileage reimbursement in addition to her wage for travel between patients, not travel from Ms. Chavis's home to her first patient. Ms. Chavis never sought reimbursement or was paid mileage reimbursement from her home to her first patient. The Commission's conclusion of law number four is unsupported by competent evidence.
D. "Special Errand" and "Dual Purpose"
Ms. Chavis is not eligible for compensation under the remaining exceptions to the "going and coming" rule. The "special errand" exception allows an employee to recover for injuries sustained while traveling to or from work if the injuries occur while the employee is engaged in a special duty or errand for his employer. See Schmoyer v. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, 81 N.C. App. 140, 142, 343 S.E.2d 551, 553, disc. rev. denied, 318 N.C. 417, 349 S.E.2d 600 (1986); Felton v. Hospital Guild, 57 N.C. App. 33, 34, 291 S.E.2d 158, 159, aff'd by an equally divided court, 307 N.C. 121, 296 S.E.2d 297 (1982); Dunn, 161 N.C. App. at 612, 589 S.E.2d at 155.
In Dunn, the "dual purpose" exception is defined as follows:
"When a trip serves both business and personal purposes, it is a personal trip if the trip would have been made in spite of the failure or absence of the business purpose and would have been dropped in the event of failure of the private purpose, though the businesserrand remained undone; it is a business trip if a trip of this kind would have been made in spite of the failure or absence of the private purpose, because the service to be performed for the employer would have caused the journey to be made by someone even if it had not coincided with the employee's personal journey."
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