A nurse in Ohio was injured when she had to walk back to her vehicle to retrieve materials for a CPR class that her employer required her to take. She is eligible for workers’ compensation, says the Eighth District’s Court of Appeals.

Lori Rees worked for University Hospitals (UH) and was scheduled by her supervisor for the January 29^th, 2015 CPR training class at their main campus. They required nurses to keep up their CPR certification, so they offered the classes to nurses for free and even paid them their normal wages while they went to the class.

Rees arrived for the class and realized she had left course materials in her car so the instructor of the class, a UH employee, asked that she go back to get them. On her way back to class she fell in a pedestrian crossing and was injured. Her application for benefits was denied by an Industrial Commission hearing officer and upheld by the Industrial Commission. The case went to trial, where the court allowed her workers’ compensation benefits so UH appealed, saying that she was not within the course and scope of her employment at the time of injury.

Her instructor, also a UH employee and essentially her supervisor at the time, instructed her to do this task. The pedestrian crossing where she fell was between the parking garage and the UH campus. Though the street was not controlled by her employer the court found that fact was not enough to impact the outcome of the case, and they pointed to several similar cases where employees had been injured in public streets while fulfilling their employment duties and received benefits. The court also pointed to the fact that her employer stood to benefit from her enrollment in the class, since a well-trained staff would provide better care to patients (their customers). Her supervisor had directed her to attend this specific class and she was being paid for attending. The coming and going rule did not apply to this case because she was already in the “zone of employment” while she was traveling between the class and her car. Rather, her trip to the car fell more under the “special mission” exception to this rule as it was more of a workplace errand rather than traveling to and from work.

The burden of proof fell on Rees to prove that she was within the course of her employment. She was doing an activity that was part of her employment, her employment was contingent on maintaining her CPR certification, and the court found that she was doing a task within the scope of her employment. They overruled UH’s appeal and determined that the trial court’s findings were correct.

Read the case here.