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Hill v. Omni Hotel6/28/2004
Joyce Hill appeals from the order of the superior court affirming the award of the Georgia Board of Workers' Compensation, which denied her request for workers' compensation benefits.
The employer in this case is Omni Hotels at CNN Center in Atlanta. CNN Center is composed of a number of buildings, covering an area approximately four city blocks long. The facility includes Phillips Arena and a MARTA railway station. The middle building of the complex includes the CNN food court, the CNN tower, which is approximately 22 stories high, and the Omni Hotel.
Hill worked for Omni Hotel as a PBX, or telephone, operator. On January 25, 2002, on the way to her job she rode a MARTA train to the CNN Center/World Congress Center station. Hill testified that there are four entrances to the middle building of the CNN center, one on each of the four sides of the building. After exiting the MARTA station, Hill used the entrance closest to the MARTA station to enter the building, the most direct route to her job. As she entered, she asserts that she tripped over a rolled-up carpet just inside the door. This occurred somewhere between 100 and 200 yards from the escalator that provides access to the Omni Hotel itself. It is undisputed that the area where Hill fell was not owned, controlled or maintained by Omni Hotels, but was controlled and maintained by Turner Properties.
Based upon these facts, the ALJ awarded Hill temporary total disability benefits, medical expenses and attorney's fees arising from her fall. In making this award, the ALJ first noted the general rule in Georgia that an employee injured on the employer's premises within a reasonable time of his ingress to, or egress from, work is entitled to workers' compensation benefits, even if he is not working at the time of the injury. See, e. g., Peoples v. Emory Univ., 206 Ga. App. 213 (424 SE2d 874) (1992); West Point Pepperell v. McEntire, 150 Ga. App. 728, 729 (1) (258 SE2d 530) (1979).
The ALJ then relied upon the case of DeHowitt v. Hartford Fire Ins. Co., 99 Ga. App. 147 (108 SE2d 280) (1959), to award benefits. The employee in that case apparently suffered an injury as he proceeded through one of two entrances into a multi-tenant building, of which his employer was one tenant. This Court held that where a multi-tenant building has only two ways of ingress and egress, each tenant-employer's premises is extended to include both ways for purposes of determining the employer's liability under the worker's compensation laws:
Where the employer's place of business is located in a building of which it occupies only a part, and two ways through the building are the only means of ingress and egress to and from such place of business, both ways are parts of the employer's premises within the meaning of the workmen's compensation law . . . .
Id. at 148 (7).
The ALJ concluded that DeHowitt was more on point than any other case in Georgia and interpreted the holding in that case to be that an employee's injury sustained while ingressing into the employer's office is compensable, even if the employer occupies only a part of the building and there is more than one way through the building to the employer's location.
The State Board of Workers' Compensation reversed the ALJ's award, however, distinguishing DeHowitt on two grounds. First, the Board found that only two businesses occupied the building where the employee was injured, although we find no support for that distinction in the DeHowitt opinion itself. Second, the Board distinguished DeHowitt on the ground that the CNN Center had multiple entrances, instead of just two, and the principle entrance into the Omni was thr
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