Crawford v. Workers' Compensation Appeals Board

Opinion

PUGLIA, P. J.

Petitioner’s application for workers’ compensation benefits was denied by the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board (Board). At the direction of the Supreme Court, we issued a writ of review. The case turns on the applicability or not of the so-called bunkhouse rule to petitioner’s circumstances. That rule is “no more than an extension of the general rule that where an employee is injured while on his employer’s premises as contemplated by his employment contract, he is entitled to compensation for injuries received during the reasonable and anticipatable use thereof.”

(Rosen

v.

Industrial Acc. Com.

(1966) 239 Cal.App.2d 748, 750 [49 Cal.Rptr. 706].) The question presented here is whether the bunkhouse rule applies to a state prisoner injured while off-duty at the forestry conservation camp where he lives and works while serving his sentence. We agree with Board that the rule does not apply in these circumstances.

Petitioner was a prisoner under the jurisdiction of the Department of Corrections. He was assigned to serve his sentence while working at a forestry conservation camp operated by the Department of Forestry. Had petitioner refused this work assignment he would have been incarcerated at a state penal or correctional institution. (See Pen. Code, §§ 2780, 2787, 2788;

People

v.

Wozniak

(1965) 234 Cal.App.2d 162 [44 Cal.Rptr. 215];

People

v.

Owens

(1965) 236 Cal.App.2d 403 [46 Cal.Rptr. 91].) Petitioner

[1268]

worked a regularly scheduled eight-hour shift five days a week and was otherwise continuously on call for emergency fire suppression and rescue duties. The injury for which he seeks compensation occurred when he fell from the porch of a camp dormitory. At the time of the fall petitioner had completed his regularly scheduled shift for the day and was not performing any work duties.