An account executive went to a work happy hour at a biergarten — an invitation-only event for his team, put on everyone’s calendar by a manager. Afterward he set off to find a bus stop to get home. Crossing the street, he was struck by two motorized bicycles and suffered serious injuries, including a traumatic brain injury.
His employer said attendance was encouraged but not required, and that the accident happened after hours on a public street. The Law Judge disallowed the claim. The Board reversed, and in September 2024 the Appellate Division affirmed the Board.
The case is a useful way into a rule that costs people claims: when your travel is covered and when it is not.
The general rule: your commute is not covered
An injury is compensable only if it arises both out of and in the course of employment. Our workers’ compensation FAQ sets out what those two phrases mean.
Applied to travel, the ordinary result is that accidents occurring outside work hours and in public areas away from the workplace are not compensable. Your drive in, your walk to the train, your ride home — normally none of it is covered. You are exposed to the same risks as everyone else on that road, and the employer has nothing to do with it.
That is the starting point, and it is why so many people injured getting to or from work never file.
The exception: a causal nexus
The rule gives way where there is a causal nexus between the accident and the employment.
The test the courts apply asks whether the activity was both reasonable and sufficiently work related under the circumstances. A significant factor is the degree of control the employer exercised at the time of the accident.
So the question is not where you were or what time it was. It is whether what put you there was your job.
Why “encouraged, not required” did not save the carrier
This is the part worth sitting with, because employers say it constantly.
The employer’s own representative conceded the purpose of the event: developing and maintaining relationships between the sales team and business partners in order to improve sales. The worker testified that these events were an integral part of his job, that relationship-building was the only way anyone sold anything, that a manager had placed the event on everyone’s calendar, and that the employer tracked every dollar of revenue produced with those partners — figures that fed his performance metrics.
The Board found the employer had exercised a degree of control sufficient to find a causal nexus, and that the worker was acting in furtherance of the employer’s business. The court held substantial evidence supported that, noting that despite the event’s informal nature the employer plainly benefited from his attendance.
A label on the invitation does not decide it. What the employer arranged, expected and got out of it does.
The detail most people miss: the route changed
He was not hurt at the biergarten. He was hurt afterward, heading home.
What mattered is that he was not making his usual trip. He normally commuted home from the office; that evening he was somewhere else, looking for a bus stop he did not ordinarily use. As the court put it, attending the event altered the usual geographical or temporal scheme of travel, thereby altering the risks to which he was usually exposed. The Board found that searching for the right bus stop created a greater risk of injury on a trip necessary to carry out a function of his employment.
That is the hinge. A normal commute is a risk you carry anyway. A commute rerouted by something your job required you to attend is a different trip, with different risks, and the job put you on it.
This is not a technology industry rule
The case happens to involve a large tech employer and an account executive, but nothing in the reasoning depends on that. The same analysis reaches ordinary work in ordinary places:
- Training or a certification class the employer sent you to at another location.
- A client or vendor dinner, or an industry event your supervisor expected you at.
- A company outing, retreat or holiday party, particularly where attendance was arranged or tracked.
- An errand for the employer on your way in or home — the bank, the supply store, dropping paperwork somewhere.
- Being sent to a different job site than your usual one.
- Travel between work locations during the day.
Each of these can change the geography of your day at the employer’s instance. That is the argument.
A second exception: when the employer provides the ride
Everything above turns on the trip being different from your normal one. There is a separate exception that does not depend on geography at all, and for construction and trade work it is the one that matters most.
Where the employer takes responsibility for transporting employees — particularly where the employer is in exclusive control of the means of conveyance — the ordinary commuting rule gives way. The question remains whether there is some nexus between the accident and the employment, but the employer’s control of the vehicle supplies it.
A June 2024 decision applied this to two carpenters. They met at a train station parking lot, where a van the employer provided picked them up and drove them to a job site in Greenpoint. The van was in an accident on the way. Both men were hurt — neck and back for one, neck, back and left knee for the other — and both claims were established.
The court’s reasoning was short: “Inasmuch as the employer took responsibility for the inherent risks of transporting [claimants to and] from the work site and had exclusive control of the conveyance,” there was no reason to disturb the Board’s finding that the injuries arose out of and in the course of employment.
Two practical points follow.
The meeting point does not have to be the job site. These men were picked up at a train station lot, which is neither their home nor their workplace. The pickup point is not what decides it; who runs the vehicle is.
It does not have to be a formal benefit. A crew van, a foreman’s truck, a company car a supervisor drives — if the employer arranged the transportation and controls it, the analysis is the same. This is ordinary practice on job sites across Staten Island and Brooklyn, and workers hurt in those vehicles routinely assume they were merely commuting.
Where the line still holds
It would be misleading to suggest every trip becomes compensable because work was somewhere in the background.
A purely social gathering of coworkers that the employer neither arranged nor benefited from is a different case. So is a genuine personal detour taken for your own reasons. The test has two halves — reasonable and sufficiently work related — and both have to hold. Expect the carrier to controvert the claim and to argue the event was optional and social, which is exactly what was argued here and rejected on the facts.
If you were hurt going to or from something work related
- Report it as a work injury even though it happened off premises and off the clock. That decision is not yours to make in advance.
- Preserve the invitation. The calendar entry, the email, the group chat, who sent it and what it said. In this case a manager putting it on everyone’s calendar mattered.
- Write down why you were there — what the event was for, who expected you, what your employer got from it.
- Explain how your route differed from your normal trip. The change in geography is doing real work in the analysis.
- Do not accept “it was voluntary” as the answer. It was said here too, by the employer, and the claim was still established.
Our workers’ compensation page covers how claims are established generally.
Talk to a New York workers’ compensation attorney
Off-premises injuries are among the most frequently denied and among the most frequently won on appeal, because they turn on facts about your job that a carrier has no interest in developing. A denial at the first hearing is not the end of it.
Call (718) 701-2776. The consultation costs nothing, and you will speak with me.
Matter of Matter v Google Inc., Appellate Division, Third Department, September 26, 2024, Docket No. CV-23-0719; Matter of Reyes Bonilla v XL Specialty Ins., Appellate Division, Third Department, June 27, 2024, Docket Nos. CV-22-2294, CV-22-2299.
We handle workers’ compensation claims for injured workers throughout the five boroughs and across New York State. If we don’t recover money for you, we don’t get paid.
Nothing on this page is legal advice about your own claim. Whether an off-premises injury is compensable depends on the facts of the individual case.
