United Airlines, Inc. v. Ill. Workers' Comp. Comm'n

50 N.E.3d 661

401 Ill.Dec. 519

UNITED AIRLINES, INC., Appellant

v.The ILLINOIS WORKERS' COMPENSATION COMMISSION et al. (Kristine Isern, Appellee).

No. 1–15–1693WC.

Appellate Court of Illinois, First District, Workers' Compensation Commission Division.

Feb. 11, 2016.

Rehearing Denied March 14, 2016.

Karen E. Coon, Wiedner & McAuliffe, Ltd., Chicago, for appellant.

Brian J. McManus, Sr., and Mark P. Connolly, Brian J. McManus & Associates, Ltd., Chicago, for appellee.

OPINION

Justice STEWART delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion.

¶ 1 The claimant, Kristine Isern, a flight attendant for the employer, United Airlines Inc. (United), injured her knee on a flight from Denver, Colorado, to New York's La Guardia airport. She did not work as a flight attendant on the flight from Denver to New York, but flew as a passenger. At the time of her injury, she resided in Boulder, Colorado, and worked on United's flights originating out of John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK airport) in New York City. She was flying to New York the day before she was scheduled to work on a United flight originating from JFK airport.

¶ 2 The claimant filed a claim under the Illinois Workers' Compensation Act (the Act) (820 ILCS 305/1 et seq. (West 2012)) and maintained that, at the time she injured her knee, she qualified as a “traveling employee” under the Act. The arbitrator agreed and awarded her benefits under the Act. On review, the Illinois Workers' Compensation Commission (the Commission) reversed the arbitrator, finding that the claimant did not qualify as a traveling employee but was merely on her regular commute to work when she sustained her knee injury. The circuit court reversed the Commission's decision and reinstated the arbitrator's decision. United now appeals the circuit court's judgment.

¶ 3 BACKGROUND

¶ 4 At the time of her injury, the claimant lived in Boulder, Colorado, but her job duties were exclusively on United's flights originating out of JFK airport in New York City. When she traveled from her residence to report for work at her base airport, she usually traveled from her home in Boulder, Colorado, to the airport in Denver and then on one of United's flights from Denver to New York. United did not pay the claimant for her time to travel from Colorado to New York and did not reimburse her for any travel expenses, meals, or hotel costs for traveling to or staying in New York. It paid her only for the time she performed flight attendant duties on aircraft departing JFK airport. The claimant began earning wages when the aircraft departed the gate at JFK airport and until the flight arrived at its destination.

¶ 5 United did not require its New York City based employees to reside in the New York City area, and the claimant testified that United had no control over where she lived. The record includes testimony that 80% of United's New York based flight attendants commuted to New York from areas outside the New York City area. In 2006, United offered the claimant a transfer to the Denver airport as her base airport so she could work from an airport closer to her chosen residence (Boulder, Colorado), but she declined the transfer and chose to keep JFK airport as her base airport. She testified that this was her personal preference and that it was her personal choice to commute to New York from Colorado. United did not derive any benefit from her choice to reside in Colorado.

¶ 6 United provided its flight attendants with free parking at their base airports. They could elect to have free parking privileges at a different airport instead, pending availability, but it provided parking at only one airport. The claimant elected to have parking privileges in a United employee parking lot at the airport in Denver. Therefore, she did not have parking privileges at JFK airport. She could use her employee-parking pass at the Denver airport while working, vacationing, or picking up a friend at the airport.

¶ 7 The claimant's accident occurred on September 13, 2011, on a flight from Denver to La Guardia airport in New York. She was scheduled to work the following day, September 14, 2011, on a United flight out of JFK airport. She did not perform any job duties on the flight from Denver to La Guardia. Even though she was not working on September 13, 2011, she wore her flight attendant uniform to the Denver airport and while boarding her flight in order to get through airport security and avoid checking any bags. Another United employee testified that this was a violation of United's policies.

¶ 8 The claimant used a leisure travel pass to fly from Denver to New York on September 13, 2011. United provided its employees with unlimited amounts of leisure travel passes that allowed the employees fee-waived travel on any of United's flights. The claimant booked flights for her commute to New York using a leisure travel pass in the same way she booked fee-waived flights for vacations or other leisure travel.

¶ 9 Use of a leisure travel pass required the claimant to fly on standby. Revenue-generating passengers were assigned seats before any fee-waived passengers, including flight attendants commuting to their base airports. In addition, flight attendants commuting to their base airports on leisure passes did not have any preference or priority over other standby passengers. Accordingly, United had not guaranteed the claimant a seat on the flight from Denver to La Guardia. The claimant testified that she could have commuted to New York by flying on a different airline or by other means of travel. She made the decision to fly on a United flight, and United had no control or preference concerning how she traveled to and from her base airport to report for work.

¶ 10 The accident occurred shortly after the claimant boarded her flight. After locating her assigned seat, she went to the lavatory on the plane to change out of her flight attendant's uniform and into her regular clothes. She returned to her seat and caught her foot where the seat row was bolted to the floor. She heard a pop in her left knee and felt her knee collapse. She testified that there was no defect in the seat. When she stood up to exit her seat at the end of the flight, her knee collapsed. She was provided a wheelchair to exit the plane.

¶ 11 The claimant had a room at the Pan America Hotel in New York City to stay the night before reporting for work at JFK airport the next day. United was not involved in arranging for the hotel stay and did not reimburse the claimant for her hotel, meals, or any other expenses for staying in New York. The hotel's van took her to a hospital where she received emergency care and was diagnosed with a sprain of the lateral collateral ligament of the knee. She subsequently underwent a magnetic resonance imaging test on September 22, 2011, which showed a tear of the anterior cruciate ligament. On October 18, 2011, she underwent knee surgery that consisted of an anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction with debridement of the lateral meniscus and lateral condyle. The claimant's physician, Dr. McCarty, released her to work full duty as a flight attendant on April 9, 2012. Since then, the claimant has worked full duty and has not sought any further medical treatment stemming from the accident.

¶ 12 Sometime after the accident, the claimant transferred her base airport to the San Francisco, California, airport because her husband was working in Napa, California. At the time of the hearing, the claimant spent most of her time in Napa although her permanent residence remained in Colorado. The claimant had transferred her parking privileges to the San Francisco airport and drove from Napa to the San Francisco airport for work. She no longer had parking privileges at the Denver airport. If the claimant stayed at her residence in Colorado, she had to pay to park at the Denver airport in order to fly to her base airport in San Francisco.

¶ 13 At the arbitration hearing, the parties disputed the issue of whether the claimant's injury arose out of and in the course of her employment. In resolving this dispute, the arbitrator found that the claimant qualified as a traveling employee for purposes of awarding compensation under the Act. The arbitrator stated that there was a lack of case law on the issue, but was obligated to follow prior Commission decisions finding that a flight attendant traveling to her work domicile qualified as a traveling employee. Therefore, the arbitrator found that she sustained a compensable accident that arose out of and in the course of her employment and awarded temporary total disability benefits, medical expenses, and permanent partial disability benefits in the amount of 25% of loss of use of the left leg.

¶ 14 United sought a review of the arbitrator's decision before the Commission. The Commission reversed the arbitrator's finding that the claimant was a traveling employee at the time of her injury. The Commission noted that after the arbitrator filed his decision, the supreme court filed an opinion in Venture–Newberg–Perini, Stone & Webster v. Illinois Workers' Compensation Comm'n, 2013 IL 115728, 376 Ill.Dec. 823, 1 N.E.3d 535, in which the court discussed the criteria for establishing traveling employee status within the meaning of the Act. The Commission determined that the supreme court's analysis in Venture–Newberg applied to the facts of the present case and that the analysis established that the claimant did not qualify as a traveling employee at the time of her accident.

¶ 15 The Commission emphasized that the claimant chose to live in Colorado, that United did not tell the claimant where to live, that United did not derive any benefit from her choice to live in Colorado, that United did not compensate the claimant for her time or travel expenses incurred during her voluntary commute, that the claimant selected her own flight and did not receive any preferential treatment from United as a commuting employee, and...