Connecticut: Vacation Days Taken Prior to Injury Must Be Counted for Weekly Wage Purposes

Where a Connecticut employee enjoyed two weeks of paid vacation during the 52 weeks preceding his injury, those vacation days did not constitute “an absence for seven consecutive calendar days” under the terms of Conn. Gen. Stat. § 31–310(a), which generally provides that an injured worker’s average weekly wage should computed by dividing the total wages received during the 52-week period preceding the injury by the number of calendar weeks during which the injured employee was actually employed, with the exception of an absence for seven consecutive calendar days [emphasis added]. The appellate court said that all weeks in which the worker was actually employed by the employer and earning wages, including paid vacation weeks, were to be included in the formula’s divisor. To compute the AWW otherwise would unduly complicate the calculation of his average weekly wage and would lead to “bizarre and unworkable results.”

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 Menard v. Willimantic Waste Paper Co., 163 Conn. App. 362 (Mar. 1, 2016)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 93.01.

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