Court rules 'extended premises doctrine' broadens airline's property in workers' comp suit
A Virginia court concluded an airline employee's injury occurred on United's premises, as the incident happened in sufficient proximity to the terminal.
The Virginia Court of Appeals has held that the extended premises doctrine expanded United Continental Holdings’ premises beyond its physical terminal, after an employee injured herself near the terminal entrance.
Affirming the Virginia Workers’ Compensation Commission’s judgment awarding a United Airlines customer service representative’s compensable injury, the court concluded defendant Milly Sullivan fell and injured herself on United’s premises, as the incident occurred in sufficient proximity to the terminal.
In the Jan. 23, 2024, decision, Judge Dominique A. Collins held that the extended premises doctrine applied to the case, and therefore the area where Sullivan injured herself was considered United’s premises.
Sullivan was working at Dulles Airport when she fell and injured herself on the way to her car, which was parked in a garage and connected to the building via a walkway. While passing through the walkway connected to the garage, Sullivan slipped and twisted her foot, causing her to fall and strike her right knee and arm.
Sullivan filed a claim for temporary total disability benefits from the date of her injury through her return to full duty, and sought medical benefits for her injuries. The parties stipulated whether Sullivan was totally disabled during the alleged timeframe, with United contesting that Sullivan had sustained a compensable injury.
The deputy commissioner ultimately ruled that Sullivan’s injury didn’t arise in the course of her employment, finding that “the subject walkway was not the sole means of ingress and egress to her place of employment,” and that where Sullivan fell wasn’t an area that was an extension of United’s premises, as it wasn’t sufficiently near the entrance to United’s terminal.
However, the commission reversed this judgment on review, finding that, “under the extended premises doctrine, an employee may suffer a compensable injury even though the accident was on property not owned by the employer because the property was ‘in such proximity and relation to the space leased by the employer as to be in practical effect the employer’s premises.’”
The commission found that the area where the accident occurred was in sufficient proximity to the terminal, after considering “the configuration of the garage and the walkway in relation to the Dulles Airport.”
On remand, the deputy commissioner concluded that Sullivan suffered a compensable injury by accident and was awarded her temporary total disability benefits for the claimed timeframe, as well as medical benefits for her left ankle, right knee and right arm injuries.
United challenged the commission’s prior ruling that “the injury arose in the course of Sullivan’s employment, and specifically, the commission’s application of the extended premises doctrine,” however, the commission affirmed the judgment.
On appeal, United argues that the commission erred in finding Sullivan’s injury occurred in the course of her employment, maintaining “that the extended premises doctrine does not apply because Sullivan slipped on a walkway that was more than 80 yards from the terminal and connected to a parking lot that United had ‘no control over.’”
While the court noted that under long-standing precedent, injuries sustained in the process of going to or from work are usually not compensable under the Workers’ Compensation Act, the extended premises doctrine applied to the present case.
Injured while going to or from work
Citing the Virginia Supreme Court’s 1969 holding in Brown v. Reed, the court referenced the high court’s drawing of a “bright line” at the employer’s door.
According to the court’s holding, “[I]f an employee is injured while going to and from … work and while on the employer’s premises, the injury is treated at law as though it happens while the employee is engaged in his work at the place of its performance.”
“This is because an employee may be injured in such proximity to her job site that the site of the injury is ‘in practical effect a part of the employer’s premises,’” noted the court. “Under the extended premises doctrine, the door to a workplace location ‘extends to include adjacent premises used by the employee as a means of ingress and egress with the express or implied consent of the employer.’”
“On the date of the accident, MWAA directed Sullivan and other airport employees to Garage 2 as the only free parking option. From the garage, the walkway located beyond the parking lot provided Sullivan and other United employees ‘some kind of right of passage’ to reach the terminal. Indeed, the walkway led directly to the terminal, stopping short of the terminal entrance by 30 feet,” Collins said, noting that while the walkway wasn’t the only way to get to Sullivan’s destination, it “was an essential means of ingress and egress from the airport terminal.”
The court further held that Sullivan’s presence on the walkway “was required and reasonably expected by virtue of her employment within the terminal.”
“The circumstances present a sufficient ‘causal connection between the conditions under which [Sullivan] must approach and leave the [terminal] and the occurrence of the injury’ to establish that the injury occurred in the course of her employment,” Collins said. “Once Sullivan crossed the ‘silver threshold’ from Garage 2 onto the walkway that led directly and exclusively to the United terminal, Sullivan effectively entered United’s workplace under the extended premises doctrine.”
While United argued that Sullivan’s fall occurred over 80 yards from the terminal, the court held that such circumstances didn’t require reversal.
According to the court, once Sullivan crossed the threshold onto the walkway, she was no longer in the parking lot. The court held that Sullivan was on the walkway, which was used “as a means of ingress and egress consistent with the implied consent of her employer,” and therefore, “under the extended premises doctrine, Sullivan’s injury occurred on property that was in practical effect part of United’s premises.”
Sullivan’s attorney, Kathleen Grace Walsh of the Law Office of Kathleen Grace Walsh said the case was really about extended premises and whether the work injury could be covered under the extended premises rule.
Walsh shared they’re happy with the court’s decision, which found that the 80-foot distance between Sullivan and the terminal didn’t matter as she was still on the walkway, which leads directly to the ticketing level where employees check-in.
United’s attorney, Jennifer Ramey Helsel of Franklin & Prokopik, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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