A deputy sheriff in Nebraska died in an automobile accident, and a Nebraska appellate court found that his death was not compensable because though he was talking on his cell phone to another office regarding work at the time of the accident, officers had alternate means of communication and the way they communicated was not controlled by their employer.

Daniel Coughlin worked as a deputy sheriff for the Colfax County Sheriff’s Department in Nebraska and was driving home from his shift. He was on the phone with Deputy Shawn Messerlie who had just started his shift. Daniel was clocked out at the time of the call and they were exchanging shift-change information. He was in a fatal accident on the way home and his family sought benefits.

Messerlie was trained by superiors to exchange shift-change information and typically used his cell phone to do so, he felt that doing so in-person would be impractical since that meant the deputy would have to travel to the Department office which could be far away from the area they were assigned to patrol. Shift-change information exchange was an important part of their job and it was usually exchanged with cell phones, but it was listed as a suggested practice in their field training and they had a choice as to how they exchanged the information. There was no written policy or procedure regarding the exchanging of shift-change information. There was a policy regarding cell phones, employees could not use cell phones in a county vehicle.

The court rejected the argument that the call was work related for the purposes of exchanging shift change information. They said his shift had ended and there were a few minutes between the time his shift ended and the time of the call which he made from his personal vehicle. His superiors claimed that he should have been in his patrol car and stayed on the clock when making the call. There was no employer-created condition which rendered the coming and going rule ineligible.

The court determined that there was no causal connection between an employer-created condition and his death, and his death did not arise out of and in the course of his employment.

Read the full case here.