Kansas: Widow’s Motion to Characterize Wrongful Death Recovery as Exempt from Subrogation Rules Found Barred

Where a surviving spouse of a worker killed in a work-related car accident filed a wrongful death action in a state court and joined a separate federal wrongful death action filed by her son, and the parties eventually settled the claim with the federal court approving not only the settlement, but the apportionment between the surviving spouse and her son, that surviving spouse could not later petition the state court for an order characterizing her wrongful death recovery as loss of consortium and loss of spousal services—both of which would not be subject to the lien of workers’ compensation death benefits already paid by the employer. Allowing the state court to enter such a ruling violates the one-action rule.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is the co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Heimerman v. Rose, 2018 Kan. LEXIS 39 (Apr. 6, 2018)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 117.06.

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