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Anheuser-Busch Co.5/16/1994
The defendant appeals a decision of the Superior Court (Goode, J.) denying him workers' compensation benefits for an injury to his back. We affirm.
The plaintiffs are the Anheuser-Busch Co., Inc. (the company), and Crawford & Company, the company's workers' compensation carrier. At all times pertinent to this action the defendant was an employee of the company at its brewery in Merrimack. On November 3, 1988, the defendant joined a number of his co-workers for an evening of bowling. As the defendant was reaching for a bowling ball, he suffered severe pains in his back and was carried from the bowling alley. As a result of this injury the defendant was unable to work from November 3, 1988, to January 6, 1989. The defendant brought a claim for workers' compensation alleging that his injury was a recurrence of a back injury previously suffered at work.
On March 16, 1989, a hearing on the defendant's claim was held at the labor department. The hearing officer found the injury compensable. The plaintiffs petitioned the superior court for a de novo hearing. RSA 281:37, I (1987) (repealed). The superior court found that the bowling injury was an aggravation of a pre-existing condition, and constituted a new injury for workers' compensation purposes. The court further held that the injury was unrelated to the defendant's employment. The court denied the defendant compensation. We will affirm the trial court's findings unless they are unsupported by the evidence, and we will affirm its rulings unless they are erroneous as a matter of law. Taylor v. Davidson Rubber Co., 122 N.H. 428, 432, 445 A.2d 1119, 1121 (1982).
The defendant does not appeal the ruling that the bowling incident constituted a new injury. He argues, however, that this injury is compensable because it occurred in a peripheral or ancillary activity within the scope of his employment. He contends that, while bowling, he was engaged in a company activity from which the company gained substantial benefits, and, therefore, the company should bear the costs of any injury incurred during such activity. He presented testimony that he and roughly forty other company employees participated in a company bowling league. The league was one of numerous sports activities under the aegis of a company sports commission. Participation in the bowling league was voluntary. The company penalized no one for failing to take part. The bowling league members paid dues, which were used during the year to pay for bowling. The company also donated $2000, which was used to pay for a year-end banquet and some free strings for the league members. The company provided bulletin board space for sign-up lists, bowling schedules, and notices. The same bulletin board was used by numerous other company sports leagues.
Both parties rely heavily on the case of Murphy v. Town of Atkinson, 128 N.H. 641, 517 A.2d 1170 (1986). Murphy involved a workers' compensation claim by a volunteer fireman who was injured playing softball during a firefighters' picnic. The picnic was not sponsored by the claimant's employer, but instead by an affiliated firefighters association that ran socially oriented activities and occasionally purchased equipment for use by the fire department. Id . at 643, 517 A.2d at 1171.
In Murphy we summarized the standards this court has developed for determining when peripheral employee activities fall within the scope of the worker's employment:
" claimant must prove (1) that the injury arose out of employment by demonstrating that it resulted from a risk created by the employment, and (2) that the injury arose in the course of employment by demonstrating that (A) it occurred within the boundaries of
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