Wisconsin: Employee’s UIM Carrier May Not Deduct Amounts Paid to Comp Insurer For Subrogation Interest

Where the a deceased worker’s estate initially received $35,798.04 from the employer’s workers’ compensation insurer and then recovered $25,000 from a third-party motor vehicle operator—the liability limits of the third-party’s auto insurance policy—but was required to reimburse the employer’s workers’ compensation insurer the sum of $9,718.73 pursuant to the reimbursement formula contained in Wis. Stat. § 102.29, the UIM insurer could not reduce its UIM coverage limits for the monies paid to the workers’ compensation insurer, held a Wisconsin appellate court. While the UIM insurer could get a credit for monies actually received by an injured worker or his/her estate, the funds that were paid over to the workers’ compensation carrier could not be so credited. The purpose of the statutory credit was to prevent double recovery. Since the estate had to pay the workers’ compensation carrier, there was no such double recovery for that amount.

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

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See Secura Supreme Ins. Co. v. Estate of Huck, 2021 Wisc. App. LEXIS 864 (Sept. 29, 2021)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 110.05.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see

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