CASE NO. 122 CRD-3-82Workers’ Compensation Commission
MAY 30, 1984
The Claimant Appellee was represented by James O’Connor Shea, Esq.
The Respondents-Appellants were represented by Douglas Drayton, Esq.
This Petition for Review from the January 12, 1982 Decision of the Commissioner for the Third District was argued December 9, 1982 before a Compensation Review Division Panel consisting of the Commission Chairman, John Arcudi and Commissioners A. Paul Berte and Robin Waller.
FINDING AND AWARD
The Finding and Award of the Third District Commissioner is adopted as the Finding and Award of the Compensation Review Division.
OPINION
JOHN ARCUDI, Chairman.
Respondents-Appellants attack the factual conclusions of the District Commissioner in this appeal. Claimant’s decedent was an employee of the respondent town, its Public Relations Director. On Saturday April 22, 1972, he had driven his car from home to the Hamden Town Hall, where he stayed some time. He then left the Town Hall in the middle of the afternoon and accompanied the mayor. and another town employee, Mr. Richard Vining, Director of Technical Operations, to a restaurant where they had something to eat and a few drinks. During the stay at the restaurant he discussed budget matters and other town business with the mayor. Both Vining and the decedent had employment duties which involved the Laurel View Country Club, a recreational facility owned by the Town of Hamden. After they left the mayor at the restaurant, Vining and the decedent drove in the former’s car to the country club where they remained until about 7:30 p.m. There in the course of the afternoon each imbibed alcoholic drinks; and they also discussed items having to do with the town’s business.
As testified by Thomas W. Maher, the general manager of the Laurel View Country Club in 1972, certain special public events were scheduled there on that Saturday. During the course of the afternoon, a representative from the New Haven Register, called the club to speak either with Mayor Adams or the decedent Carofano concerning certain publicity photographs for an event taking place at the club.
At about 7:30 p.m. the decedent and Vining left Laurel View to return to the Town Hall where decedent had left his car. During that week the decedent had worked at the Town Hall on a budget speech which the mayor was to deliver Monday, April 24, 1972. That budget speech had not been completed by Saturday. Shortly before leaving, the decedent phoned his wife to tell her he was returning to the Town Hall and would not be home for dinner. The Commissioner below concluded that decedent was returning to the Town Hall to work on the unfinished budget speech. After the phone call Vining and decedent left the country club in Vining’s car. While the vehicle was on Shepard Avenue, a road on the route to the Town Hall, an accident occurred, and both occupants suffered fatal injuries.
Respondents argue that ordinarily an accident or death occurring while the employee is on a public highway going to his place of employment is not a compensable event since it does not arise out of and in the course of employment. They then list the three exceptions to this rule: (1) employer furnished transportation, (2) employment itself requiring travel on a public highway, and (3) travel upon highway incidental to the employer’s business. They then contend quite correctly that only the third exception would be relevant in the instant matter.
Respondents’ brief cites Farnham v. Labutis, 147 Conn. 267
(1960) as the latest case illustrative of this third exception. Curiously a case involving this same municipal respondent, although not a traveling on the highway case, provides a much more recent opinion summarizing and expanding Connecticut law on the concept “incidental to the employment, McNamara v. Town of Hamden, 176 Conn. 547 (1979). The court there said at page 556:
“In conclusion, we restate the rule to be applied in workmen’s compensation cases generally: In order to be compensable, an injury must (1) arise out of the employment; and (2) occur in the course of the employment. To occur in the course of the employment, the injury must take place (a) within the period of the employment, (b) at a place where the employee may reasonably be, and (c) while the employee is reasonably fulfilling the duties of the employment or doing something incidental to it.”
The Commissioner below found in her Finding, #5, 6, 7, that the decedent had employment duties relating to the town owned club and was at the club premises in part at least for the performance of some of those duties. There was ample testimony from Thomas Weston Maher and from the claimant widow, Mercedes Carofano, to form the basis for such findings. Further the Finding, #5, 8, stated decedent was returning to the Town Hall to work. Again the testimony of the claimant widow, believed by the Commissioner, supported those paragraphs. Respondents argue that the decedent’s work that day ended in the middle of the afternoon and that all activities thereafter were mere socializing. That is certainly one of the permissible conclusions from the testimony, but it is not the only possible one, and the Commissioner did not so conclude. Her conclusions were directly based on testimony which she believed and were not “speculation and surmise” as the court had found in Murchison v. Skinner Precision Industries, Inc., 162 Conn. 142 (1972).
Given these conclusions and their support in the testimony, the Commissioner was correct to hold that the travel on the highway by the decedent going from one town premises where some employment duties had been performed to another town premises in order to perform other employment duties was incidental to the employment and met the McNamara test.
Therefore the award of the Commissioner is affirmed.
Commissioners Berte and Waller join in this opinion.