New India Assurance Co. v. Smt Padmavati

Saurashtra Salt gives the doctrine of notional extension; it does not tell you how far an errand may take a worker from his post before the employment is left behind. Padmavati is one of the two illustrations this paper uses to show the doctrine at work, and its particular value is that the injury occurred after the working task was over — the vehicle had been parked — and still fell within the course of employment.

It is an illustration, and it should be used as one. It is a High Court decision on its facts, and an answer that rests its whole argument on it, rather than on Saurashtra Salt, has built on the weaker foundation.

A cleaner was killed while fetching tiffin on the driver's instruction, after the vehicle he worked on had been parked. The question was whether a death in those circumstances arose out of and in the course of his employment, the work of the day being to that extent done and the errand being for food rather than for the vehicle.

Compensation was payable. The errand was held to be "ancillary and incidental to his employment and has to be construed as 'arising out of and in the course of employment'".

First, the instruction matters. The cleaner was not on a frolic of his own; he went because the driver told him to. An act done on the direction of the person under whose orders the employee works is not easily separated from the employment that produced the direction.

Second, "incidental" is the operative idea. The test is not whether the act was the work the employee was paid to do, but whether it was ancillary and incidental to that work. Much of what happens in a working day is neither the task itself nor unconnected with it, and the middle ground belongs to the employment.

Third, the end of the task is not the end of the employment. The vehicle had been parked, yet the course of employment had not closed. Read with Saurashtra Salt, the point is that the sphere of employment is defined by the demands the employment makes, not by the moment the principal task stops.

Use it second, never first. On a question about an accident away from the workplace or after work, state section 3(1)'s two limbs, then the notional-extension formula from Saurashtra Salt, and only then bring in Padmavati as an illustration of how far an errand may be carried. Flag it, expressly, as a High Court decision on its facts — that flag is itself a mark, because it shows you know the difference between an authority and an example.

Its transferable proposition is the "ancillary and incidental" test for acts done during, around or just after the working task, especially acts done on instruction.

It does not decide that every errand is covered, that a worker is insured from the moment he leaves home, or that food is always an incident of the employment. Those wider propositions are not established by this decision, and the safe proposition remains the narrower one in Saurashtra Salt: the extension covers the area the worker necessarily passes through in reaching and leaving work, and activities incidental to the work itself. It does not turn every commuting accident into an employment injury.

And do not stop at the doctrine. The claim still has to clear the rest of section 3: a personal injury, by accident, and both limbs of the phrase; and the proviso's three-day rule, with the misconduct limb which does not apply where there is death or permanent total disablement. In a death case the compensation comes from section 4 read with the relevant Schedules, not from the doctrine.

A caution on citation. No report reference is settled for this decision in this course, and the court is recorded only as a High Court. Give the name, the facts and the quoted test; do not supply a citation from elsewhere.