Thomas A. Robinson on Logging on Farm as Not "Agricultural" Activity Exempt From Workers' Compensation Coverage: Commonwealth v. Gussler
Particularly in its early years, workers' compensation law was an industrial phenomenon. It sprang from factory conditions in the first few decades of the Twentieth Century, and for many years, a majority of states exempted farm labor from the protective coverage of their workers' compensation acts. Gradually, many states began to see that those same principles that justified workers’ compensation coverage for industrial workers should also apply to the worker in the field. Broad exclusions of farm workers from coverage began to disappear, and currently only 12 states have comprehensive exclusions for agricultural workers.
Thomas A. Robinson notes that the courts and the legislatures have not always agreed as to who is or is not a farm hand. “There is no argument that plowing and tilling are clearly agricultural activities, but what about a worker at a Georgia alligator ‘farm’? While harvesting is generally seen as a task and process endemic to farming, few would contend that harvesting power from the wind is agricultural in spite of the fact that a ‘stand’ of wind turbines if often referred to as a wind farm.”
In a recent case from the Court of Appeals of Kentucky, Commonwealth v. Gussler, 278 S.W.3d 153, 2008 Ky. App. LEXIS 251 (August 8, 2008), reviewing a decision of the Workers’ Compensation Board, the appellate court was called on to determine if timber cutting on a farm was sufficiently agricultural to exempt the activity from the state's workers' compensation coverage. Robinson analyzes the case, discusses the historic and current issues related to the farm worker exclusion, and observes that most courts are prone to construe narrowly any statutory provision that removes injured workers from the protective surroundings of the state's workers' compensation law. Robinson poses and answers the question as to whether the work of the employee, the logging of the trees on the farm, is all that different than the work of the employees at the nearby sawmill who process that same timber. “The benefit of the doubt will tend to be given to an injured worker seeking workers' compensation benefits”, he concludes.
To read Robinson's additional comments and practice points on this topic, see his expert commentary article.