3 Stonedeggs: A Fire-Camp Worker Left Without Telling His Manager. The Crash Was Still Covered.

Braden Nanez was 19, working as a food service worker at a remote fire camp, when he drove off during the break between his shifts. He did not tell the on-site manager. Hours later, on a state highway north of Yreka, his car went into the oncoming lane and hit a van head-on. He suffered a fractured femur and a severe head injury. His employer said a worker who left camp without approval, on a personal trip it had not contemplated, was outside workers’ compensation. The Court of Appeal disagreed in 3 Stonedeggs, Inc. v. Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board, 101 Cal.App.5th 1136 (2024), as modified May 24, 2024. The court concluded that substantial evidence, meaning evidence a reasonable mind could accept as adequate, supported the Board’s finding of coverage. For employers who rely on stated expectations rather than actual prohibitions, the reasoning deserves close attention.

Happy Camp, two shifts and a car

The employer, a mobile food service, contracted with the U.S. Forest Service to feed fire crews. Nanez volunteered to work a new camp outside Happy Camp, about 70 miles from Yreka, where the job was expected to last three to six months and employees would stay on site. With his managers’ approval, he drove his own car there.

He worked two five-hour shifts, seven days a week, at 4:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. What employees did between shifts was up to them. The employer tried to make leaving unnecessary. It provided trailers, food, clothing, toiletries, a TV, movies and a game console. The roads were rural, very remote and had no cell service, and the expectation was that nobody would leave unless designated as a driver. If someone needed to go, he was expected to tell a manager, in advance.

On October 5, 2020, six days after arriving, Nanez left “to town” in his car after the breakfast shift. Around 2:10 p.m., the crash happened. Highway patrol officers reported the odor of burnt marijuana in his car, and his urine later tested positive for THC. Nobody knew why he left. A manager’s unsworn statement guessed that he went to get cell service, which he apparently lacked at camp. According to Nanez’s response in the case, his mother stated outside the record that he has no memory of the accident or of having worked for the employer.

The workers’ compensation judge rejected the intoxication defense because no evidence showed that marijuana intoxicated him or was a substantial factor in the crash. The judge still ruled against Nanez, finding a material departure from employment, meaning he had stepped outside his job. The Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board rescinded that decision and found the injury covered.

What the commercial traveler rule does

An ordinary commute is generally not covered under the “going and coming” rule. The commercial traveler rule is an exception. Employees whose work takes them away from the employer’s premises are, in the words the court quoted, “within the course of their employment continuously during the trip, except when a distinct departure on a personal errand is shown.” Course of employment refers to the time, place and circumstances in which an injury happens, and it is one of the two things an injured worker must show. Coverage extends to aspects of the trip “reasonably necessary for the sustenance, comfort, and safety of the employee.” The traveling worker, the court noted, quoting an earlier decision, “could hardly [be] expected to remain holed up in his hotel room.”

It has limits. Personal activity not contemplated by the employer may be a material departure, and the activity must bear some relation to the purposes of the employment.

This assignment was not “quasi-permanent”

The employer first argued that Nanez was not a traveler at all because the assignment was “quasi-permanent.” It relied on a Board panel decision involving an engineer working in Saudi Arabia, but the summary of that case omitted significant information: no definition, no factors and no length of assignment.

With no case law to guide it, the court built its approach from the going and coming rule. That rule targets the ordinary, daily, local commute. Nanez’s trip was different. His job required him to live away from home for a limited duration, and both he and the employer intended that he would return to his home in Chico. There was no evidence the employer meant to make the camp a permanent or fixed base. The camp was in fact broken down about a month after it was set up, after the employer obtained an early release from its contract because of the accident’s effect on the staff. Substantial evidence therefore supported the Board’s finding that Nanez was a commercial traveler.

An expectation is not a prohibition

The harder question was whether an off-hours drive was something the employer could “reasonably expect to be incident to its requirement that an employee spend time away from home.” The test looks at the nature of the act and of the employment, custom and usage, the contract terms and other factors, and reasonable doubt goes to the worker. The court also used a foreseeability test borrowed from respondeat superior, the doctrine that makes employers answerable for employees’ acts on the job: Was the conduct so unusual or startling that it would be unfair to treat the loss as a cost of the business?

The court acknowledged the evidence was “not as strong” as in cases where the employer knew of and encouraged the travel. But it said such knowledge and encouragement are not required “under the unique circumstances of working at the remote camp.” And the employer’s own words hurt it. It said it did not want employees leaving “if they don’t have to,” and it “really encouraged” them not to drive. “But in none of these explanations did the employer actually prohibit the employees from leaving camp.” Wanting to limit trips “if possible” was, the court said, a recognition that employees might drive into town. So was a policy for how to leave.

Nanez did break the employer’s policy by leaving without arranging it. That “does not per se preclude compensation,” meaning it does not automatically bar benefits. The court quoted a bus-driver case for the reason: Letting employers argue that misconduct is outside the job “would totally undermine the no-fault foundation of workers’ compensation law.”

The conclusion turned on specifics. He was 19, had a car his employer authorized him to bring, worked split shifts seven days a week, had six to seven free hours between shifts and had no cell service. It was reasonable for the employer to expect him to leave, “whether it was to obtain cellular service or even just to get away for a while to have a break from the camp for his leisure and comfort.” Viewed another way, the court said, his departure was a generally foreseeable consequence of working away from home and “not so unusual or startling that it would seem unfair” to treat the loss as a cost of the employer’s business. Any remaining doubt had to be resolved for him.

Where the evidence was thin, and the limits

The court identified one weakness. “Speculation and surmise are not substantial evidence,” and the manager’s guess about cell service did not qualify. The court left in place the Board’s finding that Nanez was seeking cell service because the employer did not challenge it and argued instead that any unauthorized departure was outside employment. The court’s conclusion did not depend on that reason, since it said the trip would qualify even if he just wanted to get away for a while.

The employer also offered a competing inference, that Nanez left to smoke marijuana. Even if that inference was available, the court may not overturn a Board decision because the Board chose between two reasonable inferences. The court reviewed earlier decisions going both ways, and it described one, Fleetwood Enterprises, Inc. v. Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board, 134 Cal.App.4th 1316 (2005), as denying coverage for a sightseeing crash after the business part of a trip had ended. As the court noted, quoting an earlier decision, the rule “does not, however, apply to any and all activities.”

The court also rejected a late argument about the Board’s power to hear the case. Nanez’s petition asking the Board to reconsider the judge’s decision was filed more than 20 days after that decision was emailed, but the Board found he had not received it until September 15, 2022, which made the October 3 filing timely. Sworn declarations from his lawyer and the lawyer’s paralegal supported that finding. In Zenith Insurance Co. v. Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board, a 2025 Third District decision about other exceptions to the going and coming rule, the court quoted 3 Stonedeggs for the rule that an award cannot rest on “surmise, conjecture, or speculation.” In our view, that is a useful reminder that a worker relying on the commercial traveler rule must still prove the claim. Our guide to commute exceptions covers related questions.

The court affirmed the Board’s decision and awarded Nanez costs.

What this means for workers and employers

These steps are our practical reading of 3 Stonedeggs.

• Workers at remote or temporary sites: Do not assume an injury during time off is uncovered. The length of the assignment, whether you lived on site and whether you planned to return home all mattered here.
• Employers with remote crews: The employer’s actual instructions mattered: It discouraged driving, let Nanez bring his car and established a way to arrange time away. The court read those facts together and concluded that his unauthorized off-hours trip was reasonably expected under this remote assignment.
• Keep why you left in the record. Here, no one could say. The Board’s finding that he was seeking cell service stood because the employer did not contest it. In our view, a worker who can explain the trip is in a stronger position.
• Do not skip the intoxication proof. The judge concluded that a positive THC test was not enough for that defense in this case, because the record did not show intoxication or that it was a substantial factor, and the Board also found the defense not established.

For help with a course-of-employment dispute, see our California workers’ compensation practice.