884 (2004), the employee departed the employer-owned parking lot and was crossing a public street when she was struck by a vehicle. One might conclude this is not compensable, but alas, the same initial question of maintenance, control or ownership remains. Often, in these cases the employee may even be injured on a public street. Thus, the court concluded that though the city had control over 100 spaces, they did not own, operate or control the entire lot and, as such, the injury was not compensable.Īn additional hurdle in parking lot cases comes into play when an employee is not actually injured in the parking lot, but instead while on the way to or from the parking lot. The employer - in this case, City of Atlanta - merely provided 100 spaces for its employees use. In Spearman, the relevant parking garage was managed, operated and controlled by the Georgia Building Authority. 644 (1993) that the aforementioned “premises” is the lot, not just a portion thereof. Therefore, the first inquiry when assessing a parking lot case is to ask whether the employer owned, controlled or maintained the premises. Thus, the parking lot rule, in effect, extends the employer’s premises to include parking lots that are owned, maintained and controlled by the employer.
The parking lot rule is an extension of the ingress and egress rule, which allows compensation where an employee is injured in, going to or coming from a parking lot that is owned or maintained by the employer. This rule is predicated on the rationale that until the employee “has departed the premises, she has not started traveling a route of her choosing wholly disconnected with the employment.” Id. It states if an employee is injured “while still on the employer’s premises in the act of going to or coming from her workplace” she remains within the course of her employment and is therefore covered by the Act. Despite this general rule, the courts created a niche “ingress and egress rule” that provides an exception of sorts.
In Georgia, it is generally true that an employee is not acting within the course of her employment when traveling to and from work. But what if all the circumstances remained the same, except the employee’s injury occurred in the parking lot outside? If an employee becomes injured inside of a warehouse - and we can assume she was acting within her job duties, at a time and place she should have been - absent another defense, the claim is generally compensable. A Walk in the Park-ing lot: A simple Examination of egress/ingress