13.2.1 Contacts

• Jurisdiction: Arizona

. Modern conflicts law weighs contacts as part of the process of determining which forum should take a case and deciding which law to apply. In workers’ compensation cases, contacts consist of facts showing some immediate association of the jurisdiction providing the forum or the law which is applied. The Restatement (Second) of Conflicts and various writers provide lists of contacts.

A peculiarity of the [workers’ compensation] area is that usually relief under a particular statute may be obtained only in the state of its enactment. This is because the statutes normally provide for their enforcement by special administrative tribunals [such as the Industrial Commission of Arizona] and such tribunals do not consider themselves competent to give relief under any statute but their own. Hence the range of application to persons and things without the state will be given by a state to its own workmen’s compensation statute.^[45]

The problem is one of choice of forum rather than choice of law.^[46]

The Restatement lists a group of contacts, any one of which will permit a state to award relief under its laws. These possible contacts are:

(a) the person is injured in the State, or

(b) the employment is principally located in the State, or

(c) the employer supervised the employee’s activities from a place of business in the State, or

(d) the State is that of most significant relationship in the contract of employment with respect to the issue of workmen’s compensation . . . , or

(e) the parties have agreed in the contract of employment or otherwise that their rights would be determined under the workmen’s compensation act of the State, or

(f) the State has some other reasonable relationship to the occurrence, the parties and the employment.^[47]

Under these Restatement guidelines, all four states in the Four Corners case would have power to take jurisdiction, and all four of...