Background
Michael Wallace worked as an assistant warden at the Central Arizona Correctional Complex in Florence, Arizona, operated by CoreCivic. On a rotating basis, senior officers were designated Administrative Duty Officer (“ADO”) for the week — a role requiring 24-hour on-call availability, proximity to the facility, and regular check-ins at hospitals where inmates were being treated. On March 29, 2024, while serving as ADO, Wallace spent the day visiting multiple hospitals in a company vehicle before returning it to the complex and switching to his personal car for what he believed would be a final hospital check at Florence Anthem Hospital, which was on his route home.
While driving to Florence Hospital that evening, Wallace heard an alert from his company-issued phone, which had fallen to the passenger floorboard. Believing it was an update from a shift captain about a self-harming inmate, he reached for the phone, lost control of the vehicle, and was injured when it rolled over. The crash severed his spinal cord, rendering him quadriplegic. It was later determined that no inmate was at Florence Hospital that day — the last patient there had been discharged five days earlier — and that an email sent to Wallace hours before the accident listed the currently hospitalized inmates, none at Florence Hospital.
Wallace filed a workers’ compensation claim, which CoreCivic and its carrier AIU Insurance denied. Following an evidentiary hearing, an Administrative Law Judge (“ALJ”) found the injury compensable, crediting Wallace’s testimony that he believed an inmate was at Florence Hospital and was traveling there to fulfill his ADO duties. The ALJ found that his mistaken belief did not remove him from the course of employment. The employer and carrier sought special action review in the Arizona Court of Appeals.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals affirmed the ICA award in full. The court held that Wallace was a “traveling employee” whose duties as ADO required extensive travel to offsite hospital locations throughout the state, meaning he remained continuously within the course of employment during that travel absent a substantial deviation for personal purposes. His drive to Florence Hospital — undertaken in good faith to perform a hospital check required by his role — did not constitute such a deviation, even though he was mistaken about an inmate being there.
The court rejected Petitioners’ argument that the ALJ improperly created a presumption of compensability based solely on the employee’s subjective belief that he was working. Rather, the court read the ALJ’s finding as a determination that Wallace had not substantially deviated from his employment duties. The court also declined to disturb the ALJ’s credibility finding, noting that Wallace had no personal reason to go to Florence Hospital, that the hospital was a known inmate care location, and that multiple witnesses confirmed the email was not the sole source of information about inmate placements.
The court further rejected Petitioners’ late-raised “going and coming” rule argument — which holds that injuries during a commute are generally not compensable — both as waived for failure to raise it in the opening brief and on the merits, because the rule applies only where an employee has a definite time and place of work. Wallace, as an on-call traveling ADO with no fixed work location or hours during his ADO week, did not meet that threshold.
Key Takeaways
- A traveling employee who is injured while acting on a good-faith but mistaken belief that work duties require travel to a specific location remains within the course of employment, so long as the travel is consistent with the type of duties the employee was engaged to perform.
- Introducing a fault or mistake analysis into compensability determinations is inconsistent with Arizona’s no-fault workers’ compensation system; denying compensation because an employee was wrong about the need for a particular work trip would improperly inject fault concepts into the analysis.
- The “going and coming” rule does not apply to employees whose roles lack a definite place and time of work — including on-call ADOs required to travel statewide — who instead qualify as traveling employees continuously within the course of employment.
- ALJ credibility determinations in ICA proceedings are entitled to substantial deference and will be upheld if supported by any reasonable theory of the evidence.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces that Arizona’s workers’ compensation system extends broad protection to employees in travel-intensive roles, even when a specific trip turns out to be unnecessary. Employers and carriers cannot defeat a compensability claim simply by showing after the fact that the employee acted on incorrect information, so long as the travel was objectively consistent with the employee’s job duties and there was no personal motivation for the trip. For industries that require on-call staff to travel to remote or multiple sites — including corrections, healthcare, and transportation — the ruling signals that good-faith work-related travel will generally fall within the course of employment.
The case also offers a practical reminder about appellate procedure: arguments not clearly raised in an opening brief are waived on review, and courts will not rescue a party that holds back a theory until a reply brief. Carriers and employers challenging ICA awards must ensure all legal theories are fully developed from the outset of their appellate filings.