Minnesota: No-Fault Auto Insurer Ordered to Pay Injured Worker’s “Excess” Chiropractic Charges

Minn. Stat. § 176.83, subd. 5(c), and accompanying rules, under which an employer or workers’ compensation carrier may not be forced to pay chiropractic benefits beyond a 12-week period, does not prevent the injured worker from seeking reimbursement from his or her no-fault automobile insurer where the worker’s injuries were sustained in a work-related auto accident and where the worker sought the additional chiropractic treatment from a second chiropractic service, held the Supreme Court of Minnesota. Parsing the statute carefully and acknowledging that workers’ compensation coverage is ordinarily considered “primary,” with no-fault coverage considered “secondary,” the Court held that there was nothing in the statute's language that prohibited the worker from seeking reimbursement since the second chiropractor’s services had never been characterized as excessive.

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 Rodriguez v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 2019 Minn. LEXIS 348 (July 3, 2019)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 94.03.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see