Nevada justices back widow’s benefits in industrial accident

Thursday, April 10, 2003 | 9:53 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- The Nevada Supreme Court has ruled that the widow of a man who fell to his death on a construction job in 1998 was entitled to industrial insurance benefits, even though her husband was drunk at the time of the accident.

The court upheld the findings of a hearing officer who ruled there was substantial evidence that neither alcohol nor drugs caused the death of Pedro Matute, who fell about 15 feet off a wall of a house in Las Vegas, suffering massive cranial trauma.

The court said the evidence "suggests that at the time of Matute's death, he was performing a hazardous job, for which he was not properly trained, under unsafe conditions."

At the time of his death, a toxicology report showed Matute's blood alcohol level at 0.20 with 6.7 nanograms per milliliter of marijuana and 105 nanograms of marijuana metabolite.

Based on the report, the Employers Insurance Co. of Nevada denied Matute's widow, Lucia, death benefits.

Nevada law says an employee may not receive workers' compensation if his injury is caused by his intoxication or use of a controlled substance. It also said that if an employee is intoxicated or has a controlled substance in his system at the time of his injury, the intoxication or the controlled substance must be presumed to be the proximate cause of the injury.

But the worker has the opportunity to dispute that the alcohol or drugs were the cause of the accident.

The court said a project supervisor testified he did not see the accident and didn't know what happened. But he said employees speculated that trusses rolled over and pushed Matute off the wall.

A witness statement and another document indicated it takes four employees to safely perform the job Matute was doing with one other worker at the time of his death.

Matute and the other worker were stacking the trusses on the roof of the house.

There was also evidence submitted by Employers Insurance that the state's Occupational Safety and Health Enforcement Section cited and penalized Matute's employer, Robert Dillon Framing Inc., for several violations in connection with the death. Dillon Framing was cited for not properly training its employees.

The initial accident report said Matute died while spreading trusses and five rolled over and pushed him off the wall. The co-worker, German Lopez, realized the trusses were rolling and jumped out of the way.