Kansas: No Claimant’s Attorney Fees Available for Appellate Work in Comp Case

The Court of Appeals of Kansas held that attorneys representing claimants at the appellate court level in the state fall between the cracks when it comes to awards of attorney’s fees, even when successfully representing their clients. Citing Rogers v. ALT-A&M JV LLC, 52 Kan. App. 2d 213, 364 P.3d 1206 (2015), the Court noted that attorney fees in a workers compensation case are governed by Kan. Stat. Ann. 2017 Supp. 44-536(g), which limits awards to issues raised before the administrative law judge and Workers Compensation Board. The Court added that claimants’ attorneys could not look to the state’s appellate rules for help since Kansas Supreme Court Rule 7.07(b)(1) (2018 Kan. S. Ct. R. 50) only authorizes an award of attorney fees for the appeal of a case when the district court had authority to award fees. In as much as a workers’ compensation case is not heard by the district court, attorney fees in a workers’ compensation case could not be awarded under the Supreme Court rules. 

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance. 

See Pierson v. City of Topeka, 2018 Kan. App. LEXIS 33 (June 15, 2018)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 133.02.

Source:Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law