Illinois: Employment Contract’s “Last Act” Supplies Jurisdiction for Out-of-State Injury

A state appellate court affirmed a decision by the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission that found it had jurisdiction to consider the injury claim of an operating room nurse hired by an Illinois staffing company who suffered injuries while working in an Indiana hospital. In its unpublished decision, the Illinois court agreed that the last act necessary to give validity to the employment contract had been completed within Illinois—the nurse used a computer at an Illinois public library to complete, electronically sign, and send her completed employment contract to the employer. The staffing company contended Illinois lacked jurisdiction because, at the time she had electronically signed the agreement, the nurse still had not completed all the required requisites for working in Indiana. For example, she had not yet been licensed in that state. The appellate court said the staffing company had improperly conflated the employment relationship with the nurse’s assignment in Indiana. Hiring the nurse and assigning her to a particular job were two separate events. There was ample support to give validity that the contract of employment was made in Illinois and that, therefore, the Illinois Commission could adjudicate the claim.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the co-Editor-in-Chief and Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law(LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Aureus Med. Grp. v. Illinois Workers’ Comp. Comm’n, 2021 IL App (3d) 200201WC-U (Apr. 6, 2021)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 143.03.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see

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