Illinois: Description of Injury in Workers’ Compensation Settlement Agreement Did Not Bar Later Third-Party Claim for Additional Injuries

Where plaintiff, a semi-truck driver for a Pennsylvania corporation, sustained injuries in a vehicular accident in Grundy County, Illinois and eventually settled his Pennsylvania workers’ compensation claim by means of a settlement agreement in which he indicated the “precise nature of the injury” consisted of “[r]ight knee strain,” and the parties to the workers' compensation claim also stipulated that claimant had not sustained any other injury or medical condition as a result of the work-related injury, that settlement agreement did not operate so as to bar plaintiff's subsequent third-party action against various defendants for injuries he alleged he has sustained to his back and shoulder. Generally, a statement could not be considered a judicial admission when it was made in the course of another proceeding. While the statements were “evidentiary admissions” that might be admitted to undermine the credibility of the plaintiff as a witness, they could not be used to bar his tort claim altogether.

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 Armstead v. Nat'l Freight, Inc., 2019 IL App (3d) 170777, 2019 Ill. App. LEXIS 57 (Feb. 5, 2019)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 127.07.

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