A high school teacher leaves schol after the end of the day. The school, located ina bad neighborhood provides parking for her in a district owned lot at the school . The teacher pulls out of the school lot onto the city street and approximately two blocks from the school while stopped at a red light a man forces his way into her car, assaults her and steas her purses.

• A. The injury is not compensable because of the coming and going rule.
• B. The injury is not compensable because it did not occur in the school districts's lot on their property.
• C. The injury is not compensable because it does not fall within any of the recognized exceptions to Labor Code 3600.
• D. The injury is compensable because the employment subjected the employee to a special risk.

Answer: (D)

The going-and-coming rule has an important exception when the employee is exposed to a hazard that is peculiar to the job, a special risk created by the employer or the work setting. In California workers’ comp, injuries to workers traveling to or from work are usually not covered, but if the employer’s duties or premises place the employee in a situation with a unique job-related risk, that risk can make the injury compensable.

Here, the district provides parking in a district-owned lot for the teacher. That arrangement ties the employee’s commute to the employer’s property and operations. The assault occurred shortly after leaving that employer-provided area, in the same general work context, where the crime risk is a consequence of the job environment rather than a generic risk of daily life. Because the employment exposure created or amplified this risk, the injury falls under the special-risk exception and is compensable.

The other views rely on the basic going-and-coming rule or on location alone, but those do not apply because the hazard arises from the employment setting itself. The fact that the incident happened off the school premises does not negate compensability when the risk is inherently job-related.