Employee's brief on appeal relies heavily on Duever v. All Outdoors, Inc., 371 S.W. 3d 863 (Mo. App. 2012). In that Court of Appeals, Eastern District case, the court found that the employee's slip and fall on ice while walking across a parking lot not owned by the employer was compensable because the employee was in an unsafe location as a direct part of his employment.
Employee urges us to find that the employee sitting in a parked truck in the parking lane of Kingshighway was a direct function of his employment. He cites the employee's testimony and that of the employee's wife, supervisor, and employer's co-owner that they were required to meet every day to address the daycare center's afternoon bus route as part of their employment duties. Employee asserts that limited space on employer's premises and the lack of an employer' owned or dedicated parking lot forced employee and co-owner to meet inside employer's company vehicle to ensure the necessary privacy and avoid disrupting the ongoing activities inside while remaining close to employer's premises in the event of an emergency or state inspection. The employee further urges that he is not exposed to a similar hazard in his everyday life because he lives thirty-five miles away from the situs of the accident, does not hold afternoon bus meetings on his days off, and uses a private vehicle for transportation those days. Based on this version of events, the employee urges us to find the employee was injured because the employer required him to work in an unsafe location where there was an increased risk of being struck by a moving motor vehicle.
We find as follows. The employer's location had a conference room and office space available where the employee could have eaten his lunch. The employee instead chose
to eat lunch in the parking lane of Kingshighway to avoid other employee questions and phone calls. The employee was not placed in an unsafe location due to his employment but rather because he chose to eat lunch while parked on Kingshighway Boulevard.
Parking on Kingshighway Boulevard was freely available to the public. Other individuals would park in front of the employer's business at times, and there was no restricted parking for the employer only. The employee was not limited to where he was located when the accident occurred because of his employment. The employee was not parked in the parking lane of Kingshighway Boulevard to perform any direct function of his employment.
The employee acknowledged it was possible he would drive on Kingshighway Boulevard outside of work. The employee drove the employer's truck home the evening after the collision and traveled on Kingshighway Boulevard to go to work. The only remote causal connection between the employee's accident and his work is that the truck was located near the employer's building when the collision occurred.
Although the employee testified he was discussing work activities at the time of the accident, the employee was not injured because of his work activities. The risk source is the immediate cause of the injury. Here, the employee discussing business was not the risk source in causing the injury. Instead, the risk source was the employee's being located in the parking lane of a busy thoroughfare.
Based on our factual findings, we find the instant case distinguishable from Duever v. All Outdoors, Inc., 371 S.W.3d 863 (Mo. App. 2012). We note that in Duever, the claimant had no control over the parking lot where his injury occurred, and the claimant was working when the injury occurred.
The recent Missouri Supreme Court decision in Gary Boothe, Jr. v. Dish Network, Inc., No. SC98948 (December 21, 2021) supports our finding that the employee's injury, in this case, is not compensable. In Boothe, the Court upheld the Commission's finding that injury an employee sustained in a motor vehicle accident, resulting from eating while driving to a work assignment, was not compensable under The Workers' Compensation Law. The Court concluded, "no condition of [employee's] employment required him to eat while driving or significantly contributed to the accident and injury . . . [as such] there was no causal connection between [employee's] work activity and his employment other than mere occurrence at work. As such, his injury is not compensable." Id., pp. 7-8.
Applying the above-cited judicial precedent, we find that the employee, in this case, failed to demonstrate that the employer required him to eat lunch or conduct company business in a vehicle parked on a busy thoroughfare outside of the employer's premises. We agree with the ALJ's finding that the risk source of the employee's injury was not work-related or related to a risk to which the employee was not equally exposed outside of his employment. See Young v. Boone Elec. Coop. 462 S.W.3d 783 (Mo. App. 2015). We, therefore, affirm the ALJ's denial of compensation.