Illinois: Trial Court Wrong to Have Converted PPD Award to Lump Sum

Observing that the Illinois Legislature had indicated a strong preference for period payments, rather than lump sum awards, a state appellate court recently held it was error for a state trial court to order immediate payment, in a lump sum, of all PPD benefits that a workers’ compensation claimant might ever collect for the injury. Stressing that the nature of workers’ compensation benefits was to provide a substitute for an injured worker’s lost wages, the Court said the employer could not be ordered to pay the worker a lump sum benefit unless the worker had sought such a lump sum pursuant to special statute, 820 ILCS 305/9. In as much as the worker had not done so, it was error for the trial court to short-cut the payment mechanisms.

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 Iannoni v. City of Chicago, 2019 IL App (1st) 182526, 2019 Ill. App. LEXIS 804 (Sept. 30, 2019)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 132.07.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see