Heirs of Employee Who Died While on Travel May Be Eligible for Workers’ Comp

​Takeaway: Employers should be aware that the Nevada Supreme Court ruled that the state’s workers’ compensation statutes contain a traveling employee rule that generally permits an employee (or their  heirs) who is on work-related travel to recover workers’ compensation benefits when the employee suffers an injury that, although not directly work-related, occurs as a result of “eating, sleeping and administering to personal needs away from home.”

​In Nevada, for an employee to be eligible for benefits under the state’s traveling employee rule, there is no foreseeability requirement. As such, a deceased employee’s widow and daughter did not need to show that the employer should have foreseen that the employee would engage in the specific activity that caused his injury in order to make a workers’ compensation claim. The Nevada Supreme Court thus held that the workers’ comp appeals officer wrongly imposed such a requirement in denying benefits to the claimants.

The employee in this case traveled from Nevada to Texas to attend a work conference in 2015. While in Texas, he stayed at a friend and co-worker’s ranch, where he suffered a fatal injury while riding an all-terrain vehicle. His widow and child requested workers’ compensation benefits from the individual’s employer at the time of his death. The employer, Providence Corp. Development, d/b/a Miller Heiman Inc., and its workers’ compensation administrator, Gallagher Basset Services Inc., denied the request. The denial…