Illinois: Workers’ Comp Commission Has No Jurisdiction to Determine Dispute Related to Attorney Referral Agreements

Where one attorney referred workers’ compensation cases to another attorney, who represented the claimants before the Workers’ Compensation Commission, the Commission did not have jurisdiction to resolve any issue related to the referral fee owed to the first attorney since the dispute did not involve any question of “establishing, approving, or apportioning fees for services” the first attorney performed under the Act, held the Supreme Court of Illinois. The Court added that the Commission may only resolve fee disputes under 820 Ill. Comp. Stat. § 305/16 and 16a (2012) as long as they are collateral to the final award in the workers’ compensation claim. Here the attorney’s fee related to representation of the claimant had been approved. Jurisdiction of any collateral issue was with the circuit courts and not the Commission.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is a leading commentator and expert on the law of workers’ compensation.

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance. Bracketed citations link to lexis.com.

See Ferris, Thompson & Zweig, Ltd. v. Esposito, 2015 IL 117443, 2015 Ill. LEXIS 25 (Jan. 23, 2015) [2015 IL 117443, 2015 Ill. LEXIS 25 (Jan. 23, 2015)]

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 124.02 [124.02]

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

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