Barfield v. Giant Food, Inc.

MENCHINE, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. Claimant has appealed from the judgment of the Circuit Court for Montgomery County by which an award of compensation benefits by the Workmen’s Compensation Commission had been reversed. The record shows the following undisputed facts: Bobby Gene Barfield (claimant) along with other employees of Giant Food, Inc. (employer) had been given standing orders to report to the store premises in the Kemp Mill Shopping Center for the commencement of work at 6:00 a.m. daily. January 29, 1971 was a day on which weather conditions were described as “terrible; real icy.

Everything was covered with ice. Complete parking lot was covered with ice. The streets and everything was.” Notwithstanding such conditions, claimant, along with some twenty other employees, had made their way to their parking area. At the appointed time, claimant alighted from his vehicle.

With other employees he made his way across the icy surface to the entrance door leading into the employer’s store. He found the door to be locked. The claimant and other employees thereupon left the store door and returned to their vehicles for protection from the elements and to await the opening of the store. At about 7:00 a.m., an individual alighted from an automobile that had stopped in front of the store entrance.

Thinking that the individual entrusted with the key to employer’s premises at last had arrived, claimant and the other employees left their automobiles and proceeded toward the store doorway. En route the claimant slipped on the ice, fell and was injured. Employer and its insurer contend that the injury did not “arise out of” and “in the course of” the employment. ⁷²⁹ They suggest that compensation benefits are barred by the “going and coming” rule. Claimant maintains, alternatively, that the “two prongs” of the statutory prerequisites to compensation liability have been met fully, or that the “premises” rule exception to the “going and coming” rule applies in the subject case.

The general “going and coming” rule denies compensation benefits to one injured while going to or coming from work. The “premises” rule exception allows compensation benefits when going to or coming from work if injury occurs on the premises of the employer. In proper cases, Maryland has recognized both rules. 1 We believe that under the undisputed facts of this case, it is unnecessary to consider either the “going and coming” rule, or the “premises” rule exception thereto. Both rules developed in the welter of conflicting decisions in cases where one of the two prongs upon which compensation liability is contingent, either was absent or in doubt.

In the subject case the uncontradicted evidence establishes that the accidental injury arose “out of” and “in the course of” employment, and satisfies fully both statutory requirements. It has been repeatedly held that the words “arising out of” and “in the course of” employment are not synonymous, and that both must be satisfied to bring a case within the coverage of the Act. Perdue v. Brittingham, 186 Md. 393 , 47 A. 2d 491 ; Klein v. Terra Chemicals International, 14 Md. App. 172 , 286 A. 2d 568 . Definitions of the phrases “arising out of” and “in the course of” are given in Watson v. Grimm, 200 Md. 461 , 90 A. 2d 180 . “Arising out of” (page 465) : “An injury to an employee arises out of his employment when it results from some obligation, condition or incident of the employment”; “[arising] in the course of” (page 466) : “* * * an injury arises ‘in the course of employ ⁷³⁰ ment’ when it occurs within the period of employment at a place where the employee reasonably may be in the performance of his duties and while he is fulfilling those duties or engaged in doing something incident thereto.” In Spencer v. Chesapeake Paper Board Co., 186 Md. 522, 526 , 47 A. 2d 385, 387 , it was said: “The law is entirely clear that an employee’s injury may arise out of and in the course of his employment although he may not be actually working at the time, if he is exposed to risks which are incident to the doing of the employer’s work.” [Italics supplied] As early as 1922, the Court of Appeals of Maryland said in Baltimore Dry Docks and Shipbuilding Company v. Webster, 139 Md.