North Carolina: Assistance With Housekeeping, Cooking, and Personal Hygiene Found Not Compensable

A North Carolina appellate court affirmed a decision by the state’s Industrial Commission that found an injured worker’s request for assistance with housekeeping, cooking, and personal hygiene were “ordinary expenses of life” and that the employer was not obligated to pay the expenses as part of the injured worker’s “medical compensation.” The court indicated that with regard to the tasks of housekeeping and cooking, those types of activities were ordinary tasks and responsibilities that the worker or his spouse would have to perform regardless of the injury. That the injured worker might not be able to help as much as he had prior to his injury did not necessarily transform these tasks into ones that were compensable as “medical compensation” pursuant to N.C. Gen. Stat. § 97–2(19). The court added that even assuming arguendo that the worker’s request for assistance with “personal hygiene” did not constitute an “ordinary expense of life,” the court nevertheless agreed with the Commission that those expenses were not compensable because they were not related to the worker’s compensable back injury.

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. Bracketed citations link to lexis.com.

See Milligan v. Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools, 2015 N.C. App. LEXIS 927 (Nov. 17, 2015) [2015 N.C. App. LEXIS 927 (Nov. 17, 2015)]

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 94.03 [94.03]

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

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