Walking to Home Office Counts as Commute: Court

It's a ruling made for the age of COVID: A court in Germany has declared that walking from your bedroom to the home office counts as commuting. As CNN reports, the issue came up because a man slipped on his staircase while heading to the office in his house and broke his back. His employer's insurance company rejected the idea that he was injured while commuting and refused to cover the claim. However, the issue wound up in federal court, and the worker prevailed.

"The plaintiff suffered an accident at work when he fell on the way to his home office in the morning," the court summed up in its ruling, per the Guardian. But it came with a clarification: The court took note of the man's routine, pointing out that he always walked from his bedroom to his office first thing, without stopping for breakfast. However, if he had fallen later in day—maybe heading back to the office after grabbing a snack in the kitchen—that would not have constituted a commute in the court's eyes. Only the "first morning journey" counts. (More Germany stories.)