## Facts

- Robert Franks worked for SEPTA as a cashier.
- On January 11, 1987, SEPTA personnel confronted Franks during a revenue investigation.
- Franks produced money from his pockets, including bills identified as SEPTA fares, and SEPTA treated this as confirmation that Franks had taken fare money.
- A SEPTA detective arrested and handcuffed Franks at the workplace.
- Franks claimed the detective twisted his arm and threw him against a counter, causing him to fall; the detective denied using excessive force.
- Franks filed a workers’ compensation claim alleging neck and back injuries, aggravation of hypertension, and psychological injury resulting from the arrest incident.
- A workers’ compensation referee credited Franks’s medical evidence and found that Franks did suffer physical and psychological injuries during the arrest.
- Despite finding injury, the referee denied benefits on a legal ground: the injuries occurred during Franks’s arrest for theft, and Franks was later convicted of those theft charges.
- The Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board affirmed the referee’s denial of benefits.
- Franks petitioned the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania for review.

## Issues

1. Whether injuries sustained during an employee’s arrest at the workplace for theft of the employer’s property (followed by a conviction) are compensable because they occurred on the employer’s premises and during working hours.
2. Whether, as a matter of law, injuries caused by the arrest process are “in the course of employment” and “related thereto” under the Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Act when the arrest is a direct result of the employee’s criminal misconduct.

## Decision

- The Commonwealth Court affirmed the order of the Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board.
- The court held that Franks’s physical and psychological injuries sustained during the arrest were not compensable under the Workers’ Compensation Act.
- The court accepted the referee’s findings that Franks suffered injuries, but agreed with the referee and Board that the claim failed because the injuries did not occur in the course of employment as the Act requires.
- The court treated the arrest (and resulting harm) as a consequence of Franks’s theft—conduct outside the employer’s business—rather than a work-connected risk covered by workers’ compensation.

## Legal Principles

- A claimant must prove an injury that arises in the course of employment and is related to the employment as required by the Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Act.
- The fact that an incident occurs on the employer’s premises and during work time does not automatically make resulting injuries compensable; the injury must still have a sufficient connection to employment.
- Injuries resulting from an employee’s criminal conduct, and from the legal consequences of that conduct (such as an arrest), are not treated as work-related injuries under the Act, even if they occur at work.
- Where a referee finds injury in fact but denies benefits on a purely legal basis, appellate review centers on whether the legal standard for “course of employment” is met on the found facts.
- A criminal conviction related to the incident may confirm that the triggering event was personal wrongdoing rather than an employment-related activity.

## Conclusion

Franks was found to have suffered physical and psychological injuries during his workplace arrest, but the Commonwealth Court affirmed denial of benefits because the injuries were tied to his arrest for theft—misconduct later confirmed by conviction—rather than to duties or risks connected to SEPTA’s business, so the injuries were not sustained in the course of employment under the Workers’ Compensation Act.


Franks v. Workers' Compensation Appeals Board, 613 A.2d 36, 148 Pa. Commw. 25 (1992)