Mississippi: Approval of Settlement Agreement After Worker’s Death Sustained

Where an injured employee and the employer (and carrier) executed a settlement agreement, forwarding it on to the state’s Workers’ Compensation Commission for approval and the employee died from unrelated causes two days before the agreement was formally approved, the employee’s death did not constitute a material mistake of fact that would allow the employer to reopen the case and negate the settlement, held a state appellate court, in a split decision. The Court noted that under the normal procedures within Mississippi, such a settlement agreement was due to be approved unless the Commission specifically found that the settlement was not in the employee’s best interest. There had been a meeting of the minds; the settlement agreement stood.

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 Taylor v. Reliance Well Serv., 2017 Miss. App. LEXIS 296 (May 23, 2017)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 131.04.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see