Maryland: PTD Benefits Survive Death Due to Unrelated Causes Only to Extent of Statutory Cap

The Court of Appeals of Maryland held that when the state’s Commission finds a claimant permanently totally disabled, Md. Code Ann. Lab. & Empl. § 9–640 governs the survival of benefits whether the claimant’s PTD is due solely to accidental injury or to a combination of accidental injury and preexisting conditions. Accordingly, where the claimant died of causes unrelated to his accidental work injury, any award of death benefits survived only up to the statutory cap of $45,000. Since the employer had made compensation payments pursuant to the Commission’s award amounting to $52,166.54, no additional amounts were due. The deceased employee’s daughter contended that under Md. Code Ann. Lab. & Empl. § 9–632, she should have received the balance of her father’s PTD benefits which, could have totaled as much as $345,534, in weekly benefits.

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

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Hollingsworth v. Severstal Sparrows Point, LLC, 2016 Md. LEXIS 434 (July 11, 2016).

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 89.03.

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

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