Kentucky: State Supreme Court Affirms PTD Award Based on Combination of Physical and Mental Injuries

The Supreme Court of Kentucky, reiterating that for Kentucky workers’ compensation claims, mental or psychological injuries were not compensable unless they were the “direct result” of a physical injury, affirmed an award of permanent total disability benefits to a worker where the ALJ indicated that the worker’s “current emotional state prevents him, by itself, from returning to any type of employment.” The Court said that the employer had concentrated too much on that finding by the ALJ. The ALJ had also found the worker injured his back and that he continued to experience debilitating pain. The ALJ had not made the disability determination based on the worker’s mental condition alone. Other factors, including the worker’s age and educational background also played a role in the ALJ’s finding.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the co-Editor-in-Chief and 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 Time Warner Cable, Inc. v. Smith, 2021 Ky. LEXIS 377(Oct. 28, 2021)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 56.03.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see

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