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DRAKE v. INDUSTRIAL COM'N OF UTAH5/13/1997
n, 17 Utah 2d 141, 405 P.2d 613, 614 (1965). We have held that " o give effect to that purpose, the Act should be liberally construed and applied to provide coverage" and that " ny doubt respecting the right of compensation will be resolved in favor of the injured employee." State Tax Comm'n v. Industrial Comm'n, 685 P.2d 1051, 1053 (Utah 1984).
With this standard in mind, we now turn to the instant case and determine whether the court of appeals, despite enunciating the wrong standard of review, nevertheless arrived at the correct result.
As noted previously, this court has had few occasions to review the special errand exception; only one decision offers any lengthy discussion. That case, State Tax Commission v. Industrial Commission, 685 P.2d 1051 (Utah 1984), concerned an employee who was injured on her way to a two-month training seminar. The issue was whether her travel was excepted from the general rule that injuries suffered while going to or from work are not within the course of employment and thus not compensable under workers' compensation laws. See Higgins v. Industrial Comm'n, 700 P.2d 704, 707 (Utah 1985). This general "coming and going" rule arose because, "in most instances, such an injury is suffered as a consequence of risks and hazards to which all members of the traveling public are subject rather than risks and hazards having to do with and originating in the work or business of the employer." 82 Am.Jur.2d Workers'
Compensation § 296 (1992). We noted in State Tax Commission, however, that the emergent trend in cases dealing with injuries that occur during an employee's travel to employment-related educational seminars or training programs is to find an employment connection if the travel can be deemed an "act outside an employee's regular duties which is undertaken in good faith to advance the employer's interests, whether or not the employee's own assigned work is thereby furthered." 685 P.2d at 1054 (citing 1A Arthur Larson, Larson's Workmen's Compensation Law § 27.00 (1982)). We also cited to the rule set forth in Dimmig v. Workmen's Compensation Appeals Board, 6 Cal.3d 860, 101 Cal.Rptr. 105, 111, 495 P.2d 433, 439 (1972), which dealt with a similar situation:
The rule which emerges . . . is that when the employee engages in a special activity which is within the course of his employment, and which is reasonably undertaken at the request or invitation of the employer, any injury suffered while traveling to and from the place of such activity is also within the course of employment and is compensable.
The instant case, however, presents a different situation than traveling to a training program or educational seminar, which is more appropriately labeled a "special activity" or an "outside activity at employer's request." Although an employee should still show that the activity was incidental to the employment and that it was undertaken for the benefit and under the direction of the employer, we think more legal guidance must be given when considering whether an actual errand, which has been undertaken two or three times a week for several months, may still be deemed "special."
Other jurisdictions, in determining whether an errand on the way to or from work was a "special errand," have focused on the language in section 16.11 of Larson's treatise:
When an employee, having identifiable time and space limits on his employment, makes an off-premises journey which would normally not be covered under the usual going and coming rule, the journey may be brought within the course of employment by the fact that the trouble and time of making the journey, or the special inconvenience, hazard, or urgency of making it
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