Alano vs. Employee' Compensation Commission

158 SCRA 669

FACTS:

Dedicacion De Vera worked as principal of Salinap Community School in san Carlos City, Pangasinan. Her usual tour of duty was from 7:30 am to 5:30 pm. On November 29, 1976, at 7:00AM while she was waiting for a ride at Plaza Jaycee in San Carlos City on her way to school, she was bumped and ran over by a speeding Toyota mini-bus which resulted to her instantaneous death. Her brother GenerosoAlano filed the instant claim for income benefit with the GSIS for and in behalf of the decedent’s children. The claim was denied by GSIS on the ground that the injury upon which compensation is being claimed is not an employment accident satisfying all the conditions prescribed by law. The ECC affirmed the denial by GSIS. It claimed that the deceased’s accident did not meet the conditions under the Amended Rules on Employees’ Compensation. First, the accident occurred at about 7:00 am or thirty minutes before the deceased’s working hours. Second, it happened not at her workplace but at the plaza where she usually waits for a ride to her work. Third, she was not then performing her official functions as school principal nor was she on a special errand for the school.

ISSUE:

Whether or not the injury sustained by the deceased Dedicacion de Vera resulting in her death is compensable under the law as an employment accident.

HELD:

YES. The claim is compensable. When an employee is accidentally injured at a point reasonably proximate to the place at work, while he is going to and from his work, such injury is deemed to have arisen out of and in the course of his employment. In this case, it is not disputed that the deceased died while going to her place of work. She was at the place where, as the petitioner puts it, her job necessarily required her to be if she was to reach her place of work on time. There was nothing private or personal about the school principal’s being at the place of the accident. She was there because her employment required her to be there.