Boston Team Secures Appellate Win For Transportation Co. in Worker’s Injury Lawsuit

Boston, Mass. (September 13, 2024) - Boston Partner Patricia Gary and Managing Partner Kenneth B. Walton recently secured an appellate victory for a transportation company client in a worker's personal injury lawsuit over an auto accident. In a full court opinion, the Massachusetts Appeals Court affirmed that the worker's negligence claim was foreclosed by the exclusivity provisions of the commonwealth's worker's compensation statute.
 
The client company owned and operated trucks at a commercial distribution center in Westfield, Mass. The lawsuit in Massachusetts Superior Court arose after the plaintiff employee was struck by a truck driven by a co-employee while he was heading to the parking lot to retrieve his car and drive home. The plaintiff asserted claims for common-law negligence against the company and his co-employee. The plaintiff and defendants filed cross-motions for summary judgment, and the trial court granted the defendants' motion while denying the plaintiff's.
 
In its opinion, the Appeals Court noted as a preliminary matter that the plaintiff had failed to reserve his common-law rights against Lewis Brisbois' client as required by law. Therefore, the court said, the statute would preclude his negligence claims if he was injured in the course of his employment.
 
The plaintiff argued that he was not injured in the course of his employment because he had concluded his shift and was about to head home. However, the Appeals Court rejected this position, pointing out that precedent dictates the conclusion that worker's compensation remains the appropriate remedy if the employee is injured while "arriving to or departing from work on a private passage to which the employer had a right of use - such as a stairwell, elevator, parking lot, or outdoor passageway." (Mannering's Case, 290 Mass. 517, 519 (1935)).
 
Here, the Appeals Court found, it was undisputed that the employee-plaintiff had just "punched out" inside the company trailer and was walking to his car in the parking lot that the employer had designated for employees to park - a "passage to which the employer had a right of use."
 
The plaintiff argued in the alternative that, while his employer controlled the trailer within the parking lot, the commercial distribution center owned and controlled the lot where the accident occurred, and therefore his injuries did not arise in the course of his employment. The Appeals Court disagreed, writing that, under "the plaintiff's interpretation of the statute and our case law, an employee struck and injured by an employer's vehicle, operated by a fellow employee, in the very area where the employees worked for the employer, would not be eligible for workers' compensation. Such a result would flout the plain language and intent of the act as well as precedent and common sense."