Canonical equals() method for Java as on Android Developers site

Here's how the site suggests you to write an equals() method.

   @Override 
   public boolean equals(Object o) {
     if (this == o) {
       return true;
     }

     if (!(o instanceof MyType)) {
       return false;
     }

     MyType lhs = (MyType) o;

     return primitiveField == lhs.primitiveField &&
             referenceField.equals(lhs.referenceField) &&
             (nullableField == null ? lhs.nullableField == null
                                    : nullableField.equals(lhs.nullableField));
   }

Now, I am surely misunderstanding something, but suppose you have two MyType objects m1 and m2, and e.g. if m1.referenceField is null, this is not going to work, because when it reaches

referenceField.equals(lhs.referenceField)

it will throw a NullPointerException. Where could be my logic error?