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Nichols v. Keller | 19 Cal. Rptr. 2d 601 (1993)

An employee injured at work visits a lawyer for help with a workers’ compensation claim. What’s the lawyer’s obligation to the employee with respect to other potential claims the employee doesn’t ask about? That’s the question in Nichols versus Keller.

Warren Nichols was a boilermaker employed by Zurn Industries. In December of 1987, Nichols was injured on a construction site when a piece of steel hit him on the head.

In February of 1988, Nichols met with attorney Elbert Fulfer to discuss his legal options. Fulfer had Nichols sign a workers’ compensation application, which Fulfer filed with the appropriate state office. Fulfer then asked attorney Edward Keller to handle Nichols’s workers’ compensation claim. Keller met with Nichols and told Nichols that Keller would represent him in his workers’ compensation case.

Sometime in 1989, Nichols was referred to another attorney, James Butler. When he met with Butler, Nichols learned for the first time that he could’ve filed a third-party personal-injury claim based on his injuries, but that the statute of limitations had passed. Nichols sued Keller and Fulfer, whom we’ll collectively call Keller, alleging that Keller had committed legal malpractice by failing to tell him about the possibility of a third-party claim and the applicable statute of limitations.

Keller moved for summary judgment, arguing that the attorney-client relationship between Keller and Nichols was limited to the workers’ compensation claim and that Keller owed Nichols no duty to advise him about other potential claims. Keller also maintained that Nichols couldn’t prove he’d ever had a viable third-party claim. The trial court granted summary judgment for Keller, and Nichols appealed to the California Court of Appeal.

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