District of Columbia: Public Sector Employee May Not Recover Schedule Benefits for PTSD

The schedule benefits section of the District of Columbia's public-sector workers' compensation law, D.C. Code § 1-623.07 (2016 Repl.), does not provide for the payment of benefits for a worker's PTSD, held an appellate court, in spite of the worker's claim that she had sustained an injury to the "brain/head." Claimant had been diagnosed with PTSD and a six percent PPD, following a physical injury that she sustained in connection with her work. She sought an award of PPD benefits after she had returned to work. Observing that schedule benefits were but one form of statutory benefits allowed to an injured employee, the court said only those benefits listed in the "schedule" could support an award under the statute.

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).

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See Office of Risk Mgmt. v. Jordan, 2020 D.C. App. LEXIS 378 (Sept. 18, 2020)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, §§ 56.03, 86.03.

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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