Coates v. J. M. Bucheimer Co.

Horney, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. In this workmen’s compensation case, the primary question presented is whether the trial court erred in granting the motion for a directed verdict in favor of the employer on the ground that the injury suffered by the employee did not arise out of and in the course of her employment. The employee (Ruth N. Coates) is the appellant and the employer (J. M. Bucheimer Co., Inc.) is the appellee. As usual, only the facts are different: the law has not changed.

The employee, who had been employed for about six months prior to her injury, operated a machine used in the manufacturing of leather goods. In her work as a “stitcher” it was ²⁰⁰ necessary for the employee to remain at a machine except when she had to get material. At the time of the accident resulting in the injury the employer was constructing an addition to its plant and the existing loading dock was being extended along side of the new building. A roll-up door provided access from the existing plant to the loading dock and another doorway in the new building provided access to that part of the loading dock still under construction.

Neither of these doors was normally used by the employee to enter or leave the plant. On the evening of November 6, 1963, while the employee was working the 4:00 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. shift, she took her regular coffee break at 6:00 p.m., and went to the lounge in the building where she had been working for refreshments. During the “break” she talked, with her foreman, discussing, among other things, the new lounge in the building under construction. The foreman asked the employee if she had seen the new lounge and, after she answered that she had not, she asked him if he would take her to see it, but he refused because of “what might be said”.

The employee then asked the foreman if she could go over and see it and the foreman replied “yes.” The employee went over to the closed roll-up door, raised it and went out onto the unlighted loading dock. She proceeded along the platform area in the dark for about seven or eight feet until she came to a doorway in the new building and as she attempted to step from the partially completed loading platform into the new building she fell and sustained the injury for which she seeks compensation. At the hearing on the claim for compensation filed by the employee, the commission found that she “did not sustain an accidental injury arising out of and in the course of her employment” and disallowed her claim. The employee appealed to the circuit court requesting a jury trial.

When, however, the appeal was heard, the trial court directed a verdict in favor of the employer against the employee at the conclusion of her case, and this appeal followed. Code (1957), Art. 101, § 15, provides in pertinent part that “every employer * * * shall pay * * * for the disability * * * of his’ employee resulting from an accidental personal injury ²⁰¹