Alabama: Employer and Employee May Not Confer Jurisdiction Over Claim by Agreement

Emphasizing that an employee may not ordinarily contract away his or her right to seek workers’ compensation benefits under the Alabama Workers’ Compensation Act, and stressing that an employer and employee could not limit the jurisdiction of Alabama courts, a state appellate court, quoting Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, held an Alabama resident, who sustained injuries in a work-related vehicular accident in Alabama, could seek benefits within the state in spite of a provision in her employment contract that stipulated that her employment was principally localized in Tennessee, and that jurisdiction for any workers’ compensation claim should be determined in Tennessee. The court reversed a decision by a state trial court to the contrary.

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).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Sellers v. Venture Express, Inc., 2021 Ala. Civ. App. LEXIS 9 (Feb. 12, 2021)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 143.07.

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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