Background
Tina Best worked as a phlebotomy technician at Potomac Valley Hospital. On September 8, 2025, she parked in the employer’s lower parking lot and followed her usual route toward the hospital. As she stepped onto a raised curb leading to the sidewalk, she tripped, lost her balance, and fell forward onto her left knee. Best did not know what caused her to trip.
The hospital’s emergency department diagnosed an occupational injury to Best’s left patella. An X-ray showed a minimally displaced patellar fracture, suprapatellar effusion, and a bone infarct of the proximal tibia. An orthopedist assessed a patellar fracture, and Best agreed to proceed with open reduction and internal fixation. The claim administrator rejected her workers’ compensation claim, but the Workers’ Compensation Board of Review reversed, finding that the injury occurred in the course of and resulted from her employment. WVUHS appealed.
The Court’s Holding
The Intermediate Court of Appeals affirmed the Board’s order. It held that the Board was not clearly wrong in finding that Best sustained a personal injury in the course of and resulting from her employment. Best was walking into her workplace on her way to clock in when she fell, an activity the court deemed necessarily incident to her employment.
The court rejected WVUHS’s argument that Best had to show that stepping onto the curb presented a risk peculiar to her job. It explained that Hood v. Lincare Holdings, Inc., which addressed neutral-risk activities and an increased-risk assessment, distinguished slip, trip, and fall cases. The court also found the Board’s analysis consistent with decisions recognizing compensability for injuries during work-related transitional activities, including falls on employer premises and injuries during employer-directed travel.
Applying the deferential statutory standard of review, the court concluded that substantial evidence and a rational basis supported the Board’s decision. It therefore found no basis to disturb the Board’s reversal of the claim administrator’s rejection.
Key Takeaways
- An employee’s injury while walking from an employer’s parking lot into the workplace to clock in may arise in the course of and result from employment.
- The neutral-risk increased-risk analysis discussed in Hood does not automatically govern ordinary slip, trip, and fall cases.
- Appellate review of the Workers’ Compensation Board of Review is deferential, and supported findings will not be reversed as clearly wrong or arbitrary and capricious.
Why It Matters
The decision reinforces that workers’ compensation can cover injuries sustained during transitional activities necessarily connected to work, even before an employee has clocked in. An unexplained trip over a curb on the route from an employer’s parking lot into the workplace does not necessarily require proof that the curb posed a risk unique to the employee’s particular job.
The court also tied compensability to the workers’ compensation system’s statutory bargain: employers receive immunity from tort liability in exchange for responsibility for benefits arising from covered workplace injuries.