Court Opinion

ID: 9790902
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:01:08.650712+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:32.541179
License: Public Domain

Steffen, J.,
dissenting:
Respectfully, I dissent.
The majority has concluded that there is no factual or legal basis for affirming the rulings of the hearing referee, the Nevada Employment Security Department Board of Review and the district court. I disagree.
I suggest that there are two fundamental weaknesses in the majority opinion that render it unsound. First, the majority equates promotional activities with non-employment. Second, the majority concludes that promoters cannot “be considered ‘self-employed,’ because self-employment is undefined.”
Historically, many individuals in this state and nation have spurned secure, gainful employment in favor of promotional ventures having speculative potential for greater promise. Obviously, some succeed and many fail in such endeavors. Whitney and his “business associate,” Kleinbaum, chose to concentrate their time, talents and other assets in the pursuit of a personal commercial enterprise which they expected to yield greater financial reward than a salaried position with another employer. I seriously question whether either of them genuinely believed that they could legitimately devote their time and energies in such an enterprise at the expense of the state’s unemployment compensation fund.
Nevada’s unemployment compensation scheme denies extended benefits to individuals who fail to “actively engage in systematic and sustained effort to obtain work” or fail to provide tangible evidence of such efforts. NRS 612.392(l)(b) and (c). If, as the majority contends, promotional efforts do not constitute *815“employment,” neither would they constitute “systematic and sustained effort to obtain work.” If Whitney’s time and efforts were directed to and consumed by activities that did not qualify as “employment” or “actively engaging] in systematic and sustained effort to obtain work,” he failed to engage in effort requisite to unemployment compensation eligibility. Whitney also failed to forthrightly report the nature and extent of his activities as required by the statute.
Moreover, the majority refuses to recognize Whitney’s promotional endeavors as “self-employment” simply because self-employment is undefined in the statute. The majority thus denies meaning or effect to NRS 612.185(3)(a) which specifies that “no person shall be deemed to be unemployed in any week in which he is self-employed.”
In State ex rel. Cooper v. Roth, 44 N.E.2d 456, 458 (Ohio 1942), the court said “the term ‘employment’ connotes service or that which engages one’s time or attention. It may be with or without compensation.” The term “employment” is also defined in part as “that which engages or occupies; that which consumes time or attention.” Black’s Law Dictionary 471 (5th ed. 1979).
It seems apparent that one who consumes his time and resources on his own behalf in activities calculated to provide personal financial gain is self-employed. Under the majority’s ruling, an individual could engage in a wide variety of activities, such as landscaping or carpet-cleaning, and be subsidized in even the most profitable of such activities by unemployment compensation because the term “self-employment” is not defined in the statute. I simply cannot endorse such a myopic and obstructive view of the statutory scheme. If the statute requires a degree of interpolation based upon what is obvious, natural and reasonable to achieve its intended purposes, then this court should accommodate that need rather than partially nullify the statute or transmute it into an operational absurdity. By virtue of the majority opinion, individuals in Nevada may engage in any form of self-employment, no matter how lucrative, and concomitantly qualify for unemployment compensation until the legislature supplies a statutory definition of self-employment.
The majority secondarily maintains that Whitney could not have been self-employed because his activities were under the auspices of Griffin Helicopters International, Inc., a corporation. Thus, because he was not working “for wages or under any contract of hire,” NRS 612.065, and could not be self-employed because he was working for a corporation, Whitney had managed to place himself within the interstices of a faulty statute where reporting was obviated and benefits accommodated. With due respect to my brethren, I cannot accept such reasoning. Whitney *816himself described Griffin as a “research shell.” He further stated that he was “in business as Griffen [sic] Helicopter but it was in the beginning stages. I owned no machine. It was more an exploration than an actual business.” It seems clear to me that Whitney was self-employed in promoting what he hoped would be a profitable foundation for a corporate vehicle that would provide him financial benefits.
Finally, the majority ascribes virtue to Whitney’s belated revelation of Kleinbaum’s fraudulent receipt of unemployment compensation. I suggest that Whitney, who certainly must have known all along that both he and Kleinbaum were receiving unemployment benefits, was motivated more by spite or retribution than feelings of civic duty as he revealed Kleinbaum’s fraud only after the two had severed their business connections.
For the reasons noted above, and because the evidence substantially supports the rulings of the hearing referee and the Nevada Employment Security Department Board of Review, I agree with the decision of the district court and would affirm.