Ohio: High Court Overrules Prior Decisions; Voluntary Removal from Employment Unrelated to Injury Results in Loss of TTD Benefits

Overruling two of its own decisions, the Supreme Court of Ohio held that where a claimant in a workers’ compensation case voluntarily removes himself from his or her former position of employment for reasons unrelated to the workplace injury, the claimant is no longer eligible for TTD compensation, even if the claimant remains disabled at the time of the separation from employment. The worker gave the employer a two-week notice and told several co-workers that he intended to move to Florida to live with his mother. A state appellate court, relying upon State ex rel. Reitter Stucco, Inc., v. Industrial Comm’n, 117 Ohio St.3d 71, 2008-Ohio-499, 881 N.E.2d 861, and State ex rel. OmniSource Corp. v. Industrial Comm’n, 113 Ohio St. 3d 303, 2007-Ohio-1951, 865 N.E.2d 41, held that a claimant who voluntarily abandons the employment was entitled to compensation if he or she was medically incapable of returning to work at the time of the abandonment. The Supreme Court said that in light of longstanding principles of voluntary abandonment, the lower court’s decision must be reversed.

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 State ex rel. Klein v. Precision Excavating & Grading Co., 2018-Ohio-3890, 2018 Ohio LEXIS 2336 (Sept. 27, 2018)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 84.04.

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