## Facts

- Donald Leo Kindel worked construction for Ferco Rental, Inc. at a remote job site; Ferco provided transportation in a company truck driven by supervisor James Graham.
- Ferco had rules limiting company-vehicle use to direct travel between shop and job sites (with limited stops for food or fuel) and prohibiting alcohol use while operating company equipment.
- After finishing work, Kindel and Graham stopped for about four hours at a strip club near the route home, where both became intoxicated.
- After leaving the club and resuming the trip on the normal route toward Salina, the truck overturned near an Interstate 70 rest-area entrance; Kindel was killed.
- Post-accident testing showed very high blood-alcohol levels for both men; Graham was driving at the time of the crash.
- Kindel’s spouse and minor children sought workers’ compensation death benefits; an ALJ denied benefits for “abandonment” due to deviation, but the Workers Compensation Board awarded benefits.

## Issues

1. Whether Kindel’s fatal injury “arose out of and in the course of employment” when the accident occurred after an extended personal deviation that violated employer rules but after travel resumed on the normal route home.
2. Whether the statutory “going and coming” rule barred compensation, or whether employer-provided travel to a remote site was an integral part of the employment.
3. Whether Kindel’s intoxication and policy violations barred recovery as abandonment of employment or under an intoxication-related defense.

## Decision

- The Kansas Supreme Court affirmed the Board’s award of death benefits.
- The court held the deviation had ended and Kindel had reentered the course of employment when the truck resumed the approved route home.
- The going-and-coming rule did not apply because the employer-required, employer-provided travel was integral to the job arrangement.
- Intoxication and rule violations did not, on these facts, sever the employment connection at the time of the accident or otherwise bar benefits.

## Legal Principles

- Workers’ compensation requires both that an injury “arise out of” employment (causal connection to employment conditions) and occur “in the course of” employment (time, place, and circumstances of the work).
- The going-and-coming rule generally excludes injuries during ordinary commuting, but not when travel on public roads is integral or necessary to the employment.
- A major personal deviation suspends the employment relationship during the deviation, but coverage may resume once the employee returns to the normal route and work-related travel.
- Violation of employer rules and employee misconduct do not automatically remove an employee from the course of employment; the compensability focus remains on the employment nexus at the time of injury and any applicable statutory defenses.

## Conclusion

Because Ferco’s arrangement made highway travel from the remote site part of the job, and because the fatal crash occurred after the personal detour ended and the trip resumed on the normal route, the death arose out of and in the course of employment and was compensable despite intoxication and policy violations.


Kindel v. Ferco Rental, Inc., 899 P.2d 1058 (Kan. 1995)