Activities Reasonably Incidental to Travel for Injured Traveling Employees May Include More Than You Think, Including Dancing at a Hotel Nightclub

Maryland’s highest court held that a “traveling employee” (an employee who is required to travel away from his employer’s premises in order to perform his job) was engaged in reasonable and foreseeable recreational activities when injured while dancing at a hotel nightclub and is entitled to recover workers’ compensation benefits for his injuries because such recreational activities were reasonably incidental to travel.  The traveling employee, a resident of Idaho, had been assigned to work and stay for more than a week at a hotel in Maryland on behalf of his employer.  During that period, while off-duty, the employee was dancing when he slipped on some liquid on the dance floor of the hotel’s nightclub and injured his pelvis.

The trial judge concluded that the employee’s act of going to the nightclub and dancing was not reasonably incidental to the travel required by the employer.  However, the Court of Appeals found that the employee’s use of the hotel nightclub was “at least as foreseeable as other activities, engaged in by traveling employees that were deemed by courts in our sister states to have arose out of and in the course of employment,” including use of a hotel swimming pool, use of a YMCA basketball court close to hotel, and use of an ATV on premises where claimant was staying.  Moreover, the court uncovered no case from a sister jurisdiction involving a traveling employee engaged in reasonable recreational activities at or near the premises where the traveling employee was staying, where the court held that the activity did not arise out of and in the course of employment.  The court remanded the case to the trial court with instructions to remand to the Maryland Workers’ Compensation Commission for a determination of the amount of compensation owed.