A B.C. Supreme Court Justice has upheld a Workers' Compensation Appeal Tribunal decision to deny a woman benefits for an injury suffered outside the B.C. Cancer Agency in Prince George.
In a decision issued last week, Justice Anthony Saunders found WCAT made no "reviewable error" in rejecting a claim from Glenda Kerr, who fractured a knee cap when she stumbled and fell on a sidewalk in October 2014.
Although she had left early to go to a dental appoint when the accident happened, Kerr maintained she was still on the job because she was walking with an employee she had been mentoring so she could debrief her following a meeting.
The Workers' Compensation Board denied the claim and WCAT did the same, finding the accident neither arose out of employment nor in the course of employment.
Specifically, WCAT found that the sidewalk was neither owned nor controlled by the BCCA and the parking lot she was heading to was on Northern Health property and that she had begun her trip to the dentist and so was not working at the time.
Kerr subsequently turned to the B.C. Supreme Court seeking an order to have WCAT reconsider.
In part, Kerr disagreed with an analogy a WCAT member used in making the decision - that the discussion between her and the mentee was "not that different from a pair of co-workers continuing to discuss issues connected to their jobs while sitting in a pub and having a drink after work."
Kerr contended the analogy was a "profound mischaracterization" of what was going on between the two and showed a misapprehension of the "complexity of the relationship."
However, Saunders found the analogy was not critical to the member's reasoning.
In all, Kerr's appeal was based on three grounds but Saunders found they overlooked a "fundamental aspect of judicial review: that the review is of the decision as whole and not to the individual findings leading up to the tribunal's conclusion."
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