Benefits Awarded for Salad Bar Injury That Proved Fatal (Pennsylvania)

Injuries that occur during employee time seem to always have a gray area when deciding who is responsible. In this case, if the professor had left to just grab lunch, it probably would not be the responsibility of the university, but since he was having a meeting with a student, it counted as the employer's obligation. 

In August, a Pennsylvania appellate court affirmed an award of death benefits to the widow of a professor who died, apparently from a post-surgical infection associated with the treatment of a broken arm and shoulder that had been sustained in a fall at the salad bar of an off-campus restaurant. The professor had traveled to the restaurant to meet with a doctoral student. The employer contended the fall, and resulting death, did not arise out of and in the course of the employment, but the appellate court disagreed. The court acknowledged that injuries sustained during off-premises lunches were, indeed, ordinarily excluded from workers’ compensation coverage. Here, however, the student and professor met for what was anticipated to be a three-hour meeting over lunch. The two discussed the student’s upcoming defense of his dissertation for more than an hour when they decided to go to the restaurant’s salad bar to begin their lunch. While at the salad bar, the professor fell. The court concluded that there was sufficient evidence to support the Board’s finding that the professor was about the business of the employer at the time of the fall.