Nebraska: Nonresident Corporation, With Limited Contacts, is Not an “Employer”

Where a Washington seafood corporation recruited workers in Nebraska, hosting them at a hotel conference room, and completing drug testing on those who were hired, but performed no actual work in Nebraska and did not frequently have employees either as support personnel or directly engaged within the state, it was not an “employer” for purposes of the Nebraska Workers’ Compensation Act. Accordingly, where a Nebraska resident was hired at the recruiting event and later sustained work-related injuries in Alaska, receiving some workers’ compensation benefits from that state, the injured worker could not maintain a workers’ compensation claim in Nebraska. Citing Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 143.04, the appellate court stressed the seafood corporation was not a statutory employer. Without a statutory employer, claimant’s status as an employee was of no legal significance.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the 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 Hassan v. Trident Seafoods & Liberty Mut., 302 Neb. 44 (Jan. 11, 2019)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 143.04.

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