Traveling employees and deviation under Illinois work comp law
When your job requires travel, accidents could be more likely to happen, in ways that do not always seem like they are related to your duties. So if you are injured when you are not in the office, how can you tell if your injury was connected enough to your employment to entitle you workers’ compensation benefits in Illinois?
Generally, injuries that occur while driving to or from work do not trigger benefits. There are exceptions to this rule, however, depending on whether there is something else that would make the employee’s conduct expected and foreseeable by the employer, and whether it was reasonable under the circumstances.
Where your employer provides you with a car, truck, or other vehicle because there is some expected company benefit, then accidents while traveling are more likely to be compensated. Your employer is benefiting in some way from your using the company vehicle to drive to work or to job sites, and likewise is recognizing the corresponding risk associated with the travel.
But, many times when you are driving to or from work or job sites, you need to deviate from the route that would otherwise be the most direct, order to run an errand, or do something else that would be considered more personal than business. If you are injured when you have deviated, is the accident no longer “in the course of” your employment? If an accident occurred during a deviation that was for purely personal reasons, likely you could not recover benefits for any injury you sustained. The chain, thought, is not permanently broken once you go off-course.
In a recent case, the Illinois court decided that an employee in a company truck had returned to his course of his employment even after he made a personal stop on the way home from a job for his employer. The employee was allowed to drive the truck to and from work. One day on his way home from work, he stopped at his bank to withdraw money for his personal use. While driving from the bank to home, he was injured in an accident.
The court determined that, even though he was not back on the route he would ordinarily use on the way home from work, the employee was, nonetheless, back on track enough for workers’ compensation purposes. He had, in effect, “re-entered” the course of his employment when he left the bank and was on his way driving home—even if the route was less direct or not typical.
The relevant inquiry to see whether you are back to traveling in the course of your employment is whether the facts show that you were in fact on your way home or on your way to the job when the accident occurred. A deviation from that path will not necessarily cut you off from being entitled to workers’ compensation benefits for an accident that occurs after you are back on track.
We are workers' compensation attorneys that help people with Illinois work injuries anywhere in IL via our statewide network of attorneys. Contact us and we will answer your questions or find the right lawyer for your situation.
Each year our company requires all employies to travel an average of five hours to a company meeting. For this we are not paid for our time traveled. We do not use a company car. also at time we are asked to work at other locations with 2 hours or more travel time. We are compensated 50 cents per mile for milage, but no travel time. I work in Illinois an am an hourly paid employee. Is thia legal?? Thanks Ami
WE REPLY: This isn't the type of case we handle because it's not an injury, but I believe the answer is yes and can refer you to someone who can help.