State employee’s survivors can’t get accidental death benefits

Survivors of a state employee who was killed in a car accident while returning to her office from an offsite meeting were not entitled to accidental death benefits, the Contributory Retirement Appeal Board has ruled.

Deborah Combra, an employee at the Department of Mental Health in Brockton, attended a meeting in Westboro before having lunch at a nearby restaurant with colleagues. They apparently discussed work issues at lunch and continued the discussion in the parking lot afterward.

Combra subsequently drove back to work, and when she was waiting to turn left into the office parking lot, she was rear-ended and pushed into oncoming traffic. She was ejected from her car and fatally injured when a truck hit her vehicle.

The Division of Administrative Law Appeals granted accidental death benefits to Combra’s son, petitioner Matthew Combra, who was acting on behalf of her estate.

Specifically, the DALA magistrate found that the decedent was engaged in work duties during the discussion in the parking lot before she headed back to the office. Accordingly, the magistrate decided, she died “as a result of” and “in the performance of” her work duties within the meaning of G.L.c. 32, §9, the state accidental death benefits statute.

But CRAB reversed the decision.

“As difficult as the circumstances are in this appeal, we cannot find that Ms. Combra died as a result of and while in the performance of her work duties when she was returning from a meeting and was involved in an accident that ultimately took her life,” Assistant Attorney General Uyen M. Tran wrote on behalf of the board. “Specifically, Ms. Combra was not performing work duties when discussing work issues in the parking lot of the restaurant where she just had lunch. There is a distinction that is to be made, as the [Supreme Judicial Court] referred to in [its 1959 Boston Retirement Bd. v. Contributory Retirement Appeal Bd. decision] between ‘the actual performance of work and something incidental to such work.’”

The six-page decision is Combra v. State Board of Retirement, Lawyers Weekly No. 27-035-25.

Harsh result

Byron L. Taylor of North Attleboro, who represented the petitioner, pointed to what he said are two problems with CRAB’s decision.

First, he said, no matter how informal the gathering in the parking lot was after lunch, it was important to the employer. That created a new circumstance of work, from which Combra traveled back to her office in Brockton.

“She went from one place of business to another, and the interruption of lunch goes away because of the meeting afterward,” he said.

Additionally, Taylor said, when an employee travels 35 minutes to a meeting and it goes into the course of lunch, which an employee has a right to take under their contract, they need an opportunity to return to work.

“That has to be a covered event,” Taylor said, noting that his client has filed an appeal in Superior Court. “It’s not something I’ve found in the case law, but it’s a matter of fact.”

The State Board of Retirement was the respondent in the case. SBR spokesperson Andrew Napolitano declined to comment.

But attorneys who handle state benefit disputes said the result was likely correct under the law.

“When you review the CRAB decision and break it down, it does appear, unfortunately and tragically for the [survivors], that she wasn’t traveling between employment obligations when the accident occurred,” said Michael Sacco of Westfield.

Sacco argued Richard v. Worcester Retirement Board, a 2000 case in which the SJC affirmed denial of accidental disability benefits to a school nurse who shuttled between schools each day and was injured in an accident while driving from her home to her first assignment. The decision established the performance-of-duty standard for accidental death and disability retirement cases.

“As harsh as this sounds, sometimes [Chapter 32] yields harsh results,” Sacco said. “Unless and until the Legislature changes it, they have to apply it uniformly.”

John M. Becker of Boston said the case highlights the difference between the performance-of-duties standard under Chapter 32 for accidental disability and death cases and the more lenient standard under worker’s compensation law.

“There are a lot of cases where the person would get workers’ comp but not necessarily qualify for accidental death or disability retirement benefits,” Becker said. “This decision cites the [SJC’s 1996 Namvar v. Contributory Ret. Appeal Bd. decision], which involves a teacher who fell on her way back from going to the school cafeteria for lunch. They were basically saying that would be covered under workers’ comp but not for disability retirement purposes.”

Since Namvar, DALA appeals magistrates and CRAB have struggled with various factual scenarios while trying to make sure they have a consistent rule of law to be followed, Becker said.

“You sometimes end up with a harsh result like in this case, where CRAB disagreed with the DALA magistrate that the conversations at lunch and in the parking lot were considered working time,” he said.

Milton attorney Vincent A. Murray Jr. speculated that had Combra gone directly from her prior meeting to her office and sustained her fatal injuries en route, there might have been a different result.

Murray said he also did not think the decision tightens the basis for accidental death or retirement benefits going forward.

“It could have gone either way, as was seen in the two decisions. It will be interesting to watch any further appeals down the road,” he said.

Ronald B. Eskin, a now-retired attorney in Andover who represented the claimant in Richard, said the ruling reveals a class bias in the performance-of-job-duties standard.

The CRAB decision described any work discussions Combra had in the restaurant or parking lot as “incidental” to her work duties, Eskin noted.

“If one had professional or academic job discussions about that job in a parking lot, over lunch or on a golf course, they would be considered performing a duty of work,” he said. “But for the working man or woman, they are not working until they punch the figurative card.”

Eskin also said there is nothing in the law requiring the so-called “harsh result” that both the SJC and CRAB acknowledged in their current and longstanding interpretations of the statute.

Fatal accident

On Oct. 3, 2017, Combra’s supervisor, Kimberly DuBois, scheduled a meeting from 10 a.m. to noon for DMH buyers at the Hadley building in Westboro.

Combra, a buyer, drove from her office in Brockton to attend the meeting.

After the meeting, participants decided to have lunch at a restaurant a mile away.

According to DuBois, attendees continued discussing work issues after finishing lunch and in the parking lot.

Afterward, Combra drove back to her office in Brockton, where the fatal accident occurred.

On Nov. 9, 2017, Combra’s widower, Manuel Combra, applied for accidental death benefits. Manuel passed away while the claim was pending. Matthew Combra, as administrator of his mother’s estate, then pursued the claim.

In a July 2021 decision, a DALA magistrate awarded the benefits. SBR subsequently appealed.

Ruling reversed

Addressing SBR’s appeal, CRAB noted that, under Richard, if an employee is injured going from one workplace where the employee had a work obligation to another such place, or while actually performing an employment duty during travel, the injury would satisfy the performance-of-job-duties standard under the statute.

Tran, writing for CRAB, also noted that entitlement to accidental death benefits under the statute is applied strictly in that the employee needs to have died from the “natural and proximate result” of a personal injury sustained “as a result of, and while in the performance of, her duties.”

Here, Tran said, the DALA magistrate determined that when Combra was speaking with other meeting participants in the restaurant parking lot after lunch, she was engaged in a work duty.

“He reasoned that the work discussions that took place in the restaurant and in the parking lot of the restaurant were continuations of the primary meeting scheduled that morning,” Tran wrote. “This is where we disagree with the magistrate.”

Rather, Tran said, this discussion was “incidental” to the work obligations Combra had that morning.

“Our review of the record leads us to conclude that any work duties undertaken by Ms. Combra ended at the conclusion of the meeting at which time she went to lunch with the meeting participants,” Tran said.