New Mexico: Native American Tribe’s Insurer Liable for Benefits Even if Tribe Enjoys Sovereign Immunity

Where a Native American tribe operated a casino and secured workers’ compensation insurance from an insurer to cover workers’ compensation benefits that might be payable for work-related injuries to casino employees, that insurer and its third-party administrator could not hide behind the tribe’s purported sovereign immunity. The injured worker was a third-party beneficiary to the workers' compensation insurance policy. The court observed that both the casino and the insurer intended that casino employees benefit from the rights and protections created under the policy in the event that they were injured on the job. Additionally, the filing of a certificate of workers' compensation insurance with the WCA rendered the insurer to being held directly and primarily liable to pay workers' compensation benefits. Citing Waltrip v. Osage Million Dollar Elm Casino, 2012 OK 65, 290 P.3d 741, as persuasive, the court concluded that even if the casino enjoyed tribal sovereign immunity in this case, the injured worker could pursue her claim for work injury benefits against the insurer.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is the co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Mendoza v. Isleta Resort & Casino, 2018 N.M. App. LEXIS 23 (Apr. 9, 2018)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 150.01.

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