Mississippi: Managing Partner’s Failure to Secure Coverage Could Not Be Construed as Election to Be Exempt From Comp Act

Following the pattern of a number of states, Mississippi allows sole proprietors, partners in a partnership, or owners of 15 percent or more of a corporation to elect to be exempt from the state’s Workers’ Compensation Act if the partner, owner, or proprietor delivers a written notice to the employer making such an election [see Miss. Code Ann. § 71-3-79]. Where a managing partner and president of an accounting firm “elected” not to obtain workers’ compensation coverage for any of its employees—the firm employed a sufficient number of employees to require such coverage—that failure to insure could not be construed as an election by the firm’s managing partner to be personally exempt from coverage. Accordingly, where evidence suggested that the managing partner suffered a massive stroke that medical experts linked to high levels of employment-related stress, the partner’s dependents could recover workers’ compensation benefits.

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. Bracketed citations link to lexis.com.

See Harper v. Banks, 2015 Miss. LEXIS 350 (July 2, 2015) [2015 Miss. LEXIS 350 (July 2, 2015)]

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 63.04 [63.04]

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

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