Nevada Supreme Court Adopts Street-Risk Rule in Workers' Comp Case Won by GGRM

David Murphy worked as a grout pump operator for Bob Allyn Masonry in Las Vegas. On a Saturday he was not scheduled to work, his supervisor called and asked him to drive to the company's construction yard, load equipment, and deliver it to a job site across town. Murphy agreed, made the delivery, and then set out from the job site toward a personal errand of his own. About two miles from the drop-off point, another driver struck his vehicle and Murphy suffered serious injuries.

His employer's claims administrator, S & C Claims Services, denied the workers' compensation claim. The administrator concluded that because Murphy had finished the employer's errand and was heading toward personal business, he was no longer acting within the course of his employment when the crash occurred. Murphy contested the denial, and the case worked its way through Nevada's workers' compensation appeals process before reaching the Nevada Supreme Court.

Greenman, Goldberg, Raby and Martinez attorney Gabriel A. Martinez, joined by Catherine Hernandez, argued Murphy's case before the court. The central dispute required the justices to settle two unsettled points of Nevada workers' compensation law: first, what test determines whether a road injury 'arose out of' employment, and second, whether the special-errand exception to the going-and-coming rule covers an employee's return trip after completing the errand.

On the first question, the court adopted the actual street-risk rule. Under that standard, when an employee's duties require regular use of public roads, the hazards of those roads become employment hazards. An injury from an auto accident is compensable if the employee's work placed him on the road and the accident resulted from a real risk of road travel. The court rejected the broader 'positional-risk' test used in some other states, which would cover any injury that happened while the employee was where work required him to be, regardless of any causal link to road conditions.

On the second question, the court held that the special-errand exception includes the return journey. An employee dispatched on a special task for the employer remains within the course of employment not just while completing the task, but while traveling back from it.

Because the lower appeals officer had not made specific findings about exactly when Murphy's employment-related travel ended and his personal travel began, the court remanded the case for that factual determination. The legal standards Murphy's attorneys won, though, were clear: Nevada workers required to drive for their jobs carry those protections onto the road, and those protections do not vanish the moment they turn away from the job site.