Lunch break

An insurance company employee who hurt herself when returning to work from her lunch break was entitled to workers’ compensation benefits because the injury occurred on the employer’s premises, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court recently ruled.

The unanimous ruling by the Maine high court affirmed an earlier decision by a Workers’ Compensation Board hearing officer who ruled against Aetna Inc., which claimed Robyn D. Fournier was not entitled to benefits. Fournier slipped and fell on snow and ice on an Aetna stairway while returning to work from her unpaid lunch break, injuring her knee and possible aggravating a pre-existing back injury.

The court considered whether Fournier should be subject to the “going and coming rule,” which provides that an accident occurring off an employer’s premises while the employee is merely on his way to or from work is not compensable. But the justices agreed that the common staircase leading to Aetna’s offices could be considered part of Aetna’s premises since it constituted a kind of right of passage through which the employer had something equivalent to an easement.