Justin Kerschner began working as a Corrections Officer in 2012, most recently at the State Correctional Institution at Frackville, Pennsylvania (SCI-Frackville). Kerschner was a member of the Pennsylvania State Corrections Officers Association (PSCOA), which maintained a collective bargaining agreement with the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. The CBA between the parties established a procedure for claims under the state’s Heart & Lung Act (HLA), which provides, among other things, full base salary to correctional officers “injured in the performance of duties.” The CBA also provides that disputes over the denial of HLA benefits will be decided by an arbitrator, who “shall be bound by judicial opinions interpreting the HLA.”
Kerschner worked his ordinary 8 am to 4 pm shift on January 23, 2022. He lives about an hour away from SCI-Frackville and arrived at home at about 5 pm. At 10 pm, he returned to SCI-Frackville for a mandatory overtime shift, which would last until 6 am. His assignment was to patrol the perimeter of the prison in his patrol vehicle. Kerschner had been warned on prior occasions that he could face discipline for failing to arrive for a mandatory shift.
At about 4 am on January 24, 2022, Kerschner fell asleep at the wheel of his patrol vehicle and crashed into a garage. He was hospitalized and diagnosed with a concussion and tested positive for COVID-19. At the arbitration hearing, Kerschner testified that since the accident, he has had trouble with concentration, mood swings, and debilitating headaches. Two days after the accident, Kerschner was treated by his primary care physician, who confirmed that he had suffered a concussion. Two weeks later, Kerschner was treated by a Department-approved physician, Dr. David Wood, who diagnosed him with post-concussion syndrome. After his HLA claim was denied, Kerschner stopped seeing Dr. Wood because he could not afford the out-of-pocket costs.
Kerschner filed a claim for HLA benefits, which the Department denied, claiming that he was not injured “in the performance of his duties” because sleeping on the job is expressly forbidden by the Code of Ethics and punishable by termination. PSCOA filed for arbitration on Kerschner’s behalf. The Arbitrator ruled in PSCOA and Kerschner’s favor, finding that the injury occurred “in the performance of Kerschner’s duties. Kerschner did not try to fall asleep. As suggested by PSCOA, there may be facts where the employee’s actions do establish a willful intention by the employee to stop working and go to sleep, thereby removing him from the performance of duties. That is not the case here. While Kerschner’s actions in sleeping here may reflect how well he was performing his duties, they do not alter the fact that he was performing his duties. There is nothing in the HLA itself, or in the caselaw, that allows a denial of benefits based on the quality of the employee’s performance.” The Department appealed, seeking to have the Arbitrator’s award vacated in court.
The Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court affirmed the arbitration award “under the ‘essence test.’ This Court must affirm an arbitration award if the issue, as properly defined, is within the terms of the parties’ CBA and the arbitrator’s interpretation can be rationally derived from the CBA. In other words, the question is ‘not whether this Court agrees with the Arbitrator’s interpretation of the CBA but whether the Arbitrator’s interpretation and application of the CBA can be reconciled with the language of the CBA.’” In this case, the sole question before the Court was whether Kerschner was “injured in the performance of his duties” when he fell asleep while driving the patrol vehicle.
In concluding that Kerschner was injured in the performance of his duties, the Court first distinguished cases cited by the Department in which public safety employees were denied HLA benefits for injuries which occurred while they were coming off duty. “In this case, however, Mr. Kerschner was indisputably ‘on duty’ at the time of his injuries, as he was in the midst of performing the obligatory task of patrolling the perimeter of the prison that he was assigned to. Consequently, the only question here is whether Mr. Kerschner’s act of inadvertently falling asleep while performing his assigned duty precludes an award of HLA benefits.”
Finally, the Court decided that despite Kerschner’s falling asleep at the wheel, the Arbitrator rationally decided that he was entitled to HLA benefits under the contract. It emphasized the facts that (1) Kerschner’s falling asleep was clearly unintentional; (2) Kerschner had no history of sleeping at work; and (3) Kerschner’s commute and potential discipline for failing to arrive at a mandatory shift set the stage for him working through extreme fatigue. Accordingly, the Court declined to vacate the Arbitrator’s award.
Department of Corrections v. Pennsylvania State Corrections Officers Association, No. 1201 C.D. 2022, 2024 WL 171905 (Pa. Commw. Ct., 2024).