## Facts

- Walter H. Griebel worked for Kathleen Rector maintaining her rural “Morning Star” ranch and occasionally assisting with upkeep of other personal properties and moving-related tasks for Rector and her family.
- After Rector’s husband died, Rector moved to a city townhouse but retained the ranch and other properties; there was no evidence she operated them as a commercial venture or profit-seeking enterprise.
- Rector became engaged to Dayton, who owned an old ranch on a leased mining claim used for personal purposes and not suitable for commercial operation.
- Dayton asked Griebel to help with an electrical problem at the mining-claim ranch.
- On March 6, 1980, Griebel died in an automobile accident while driving away from the Morning Star ranch; the record did not establish whether he was traveling to Rector’s townhouse or to Dayton’s ranch.
- Griebel’s widow, Eleanor Griebel, filed a workers’ compensation claim for death benefits.
- The Industrial Commission denied benefits after hearings, finding Rector was not a statutory “employer,” Griebel was a “domestic servant,” and the widow had settled a third-party claim without required approval.

## Issues

1. Whether Rector qualified as an “employer” under A.R.S. § 23-902(A) by being engaged in a trade, business, profession, or occupation that used Griebel’s labor in the usual course.
2. Whether Griebel’s work was that of a “domestic servant,” placing him within an exclusion from mandatory workers’ compensation coverage.
3. Whether the widow’s settlement of a third-party claim without Commission approval independently barred compensation.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeals affirmed the Industrial Commission’s denial of death benefits.
- Rector was not an “employer” under A.R.S. § 23-902(A) because her ownership and maintenance of personal properties did not constitute a trade, business, profession, or occupation.
- Griebel’s work maintaining personal residences and property was domestic service and therefore excluded from mandatory coverage.
- Griebel’s occasional assistance to Dayton did not create covered employment because that work was also personal and noncommercial.
- Because coverage failed on statutory employer/exclusion grounds, the court did not reach the third-party settlement issue as a dispositive basis.

## Legal Principles

- A.R.S. § 23-902(A) requires a covered employer to be engaged in a trade, business, profession, or occupation, with the worker employed in the usual course of that activity.
- Mere ownership of property and hiring labor for personal maintenance, without an organized profit-seeking operation, does not make the owner a statutory employer.
- Work performed for the personal comfort, convenience, or upkeep of an owner’s household or personal properties is domestic service and may fall within the domestic servant exclusion.
- Assigning a domestic worker to assist a third person on similarly personal, noncommercial tasks does not convert the work into covered employment.

## Conclusion

The court upheld denial of workers’ compensation death benefits because the decedent’s work maintained private property for personal use rather than a profit-directed enterprise, making the property owner outside the Act’s employer definition and the decedent a domestic servant excluded from mandatory coverage.


Griebel v. Indus. Comm'n of Ariz., 133 Ariz. 270, 650 P.2d 1252 (Ct. App. 1982)