Despite the apparent harshness of the rule, the Supreme Court of Alaska affirmed a trial court’s decision granting a general contractor and building owner summary judgment in a wrongful death action filed by the estate of an apprentice electrician... Read More

Acknowledging that an employee’s death had resulted from acute intoxication, a Connecticut appellate court nevertheless held substantial evidence supported a finding that there was an unbroken chain-of-causation between the employee’s original... Read More

The Supreme Court of New Hampshire, in a case of first impression, held that the appropriate test to gauge the compensability of suicide claims should be the so-called “chain-of-causation.” In its ruling, the Court affirmed a ruling by the... Read More

Noting that the surviving spouse had the burden of showing a causal connection between his wife’s death and her employment, and stressing that speculative medical evidence was insufficient, a New York appellate court affirmed a decision by the New... Read More

A Missouri appellate court affirmed a decision by the state’s Labor and industrial Relations Commission that held a worker’s death from a heat stroke was a compensable accident, thus barring a tort action filed by the worker’s nondependent... Read More

Applying the so-called “bunkhouse rule,” a South Carolina appellate court affirmed a decision by the Appellate Panel of the South Carolina Court of Appeals that had awarded death benefits to the children of a motel worker who was shot and... Read More

The presumption contained in N. Y. Workers' Comp. § 21(a) was insufficient to support an award of death benefits to a widow whose husband suffered an injury by accident in 2004, was awarded PPD in 2007, and who died in 2016, where the only medical... Read More

Where an injured worker died from complications following surgery to treat a medical condition that was tied to a work-related injury that had occurred ten years earlier, his widow was entitled to statutory income benefits under Ky. Rev. Stat. §... Read More

An airline pilot's "deviation" ceased when he and a colleague stopped drinking and retired to the colleague's hotel room--the pilot was so inebriated that he could not find his own hotel--held a Colorado appellate court. Accordingly... Read More

A New York appellate court affirmed an award of death benefits to the widow of a workers who committed suicide some two years after he suffered a debilitating work-related injury to the head. The appellate court stressed that it was the Board's duty... Read More

Stressing that a person who is not a party to a contract is not bound by its terms, a Maryland appellate court held that a widow was not bound by a settlement agreement signed by her husband that purported to release not only the husband's rights... Read More

The Supreme Court of Mississippi, in a divided decision, reversed a similarly divided decision by the state's Court of Appeals, and held that where a father's parental rights had been terminated through a properly administered adoption proceeding... Read More

The Supreme Court of South Dakota affirmed an award of death benefits to the surviving spouse of a municipal employee who died in a work-related trench collapse and criticized the state's Department of Labor for coming "perilously close to the... Read More

The Supreme Court of South Carolina held a deceased employee’s girlfriend — early in the litigation, she had contended she was his common law wife — could not recover workers’ compensation death benefits because she had failed... Read More

The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, in a memorandum decision, affirmed a decision of the state’s Workers’ Compensation Board of Review that denied dependent’s benefits and fatal dependent’s benefits to the daughter of... Read More