Idaho: For IME Purposes, Court Takes Broad View in Defining “Period of Disability”

In spite of language within Idaho's IME statute [Idaho Code § 72-433] that appears to require attendance at the independent medical examination (IME) session only during the injured employee's ”period of disability,” an employer who had ceased payment of workers' compensation benefits was within its rights to compel attendance at an IME session once the employee filed a complaint seeking their reinstatement, held the Supreme Court of Idaho. While it was certainly true that at the time of the employer's request, she was not receiving benefits—the employer ceased paying them after it received a medical report indicating the employee had returned to her pre-injury baseline and needed no further medical care for the compensable condition—it was the employee’s action in seeking disability benefits, not his or her receipt of such benefits, that triggered the employer’s right to seek an IME.

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 Moser v. Rosauers Supermarkets, 2019 Ida. LEXIS 86(May 15, 2019)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 94.02

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see