Minnesota: Employer Cannot Be Severally Liable With Third Party Defendant

The Minnesota rule that an employer may not be considered “severally liable” along with a defendant, third-party was unaffected by a 2003 amendment to Minn. Stat. § 604.02, subs. 1, held the state’s Supreme Court. Under the clear terms of the statute, the third-party defendant’s liability to the injured worker was not reduced by the measure, if any, of the employer’s fault. The Supreme Court agreed with the trial court’s limitation of the third-party tortfeasor’s “benefit” to a credit in the amount of the workers’ compensation benefits paid by or on behalf of the employer to the injured worker.

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 Fish v. Ramler Trucking, Inc., 2019 Minn. LEXIS 699 (Nov. 27, 2019)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 120.02.

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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