Mississippi: Unwitnessed Death Found to Have Been Compensable

Observing that in Mississippi (as in a number of other states), where a worker is found dead at a place in which her duties required her to be during normal working hours, there is a presumption that the death arose out of and in the course of the employment, a state appellate court affirmed an award of death benefits to the defendants of a hospital technician who was found dead in her office. Although no autopsy was performed, the death certificate indicated the cause of death was acute myocardial infarction. Noting that the burden was on the employer to rebut the presumption, the court noted the employer had not come forward with any evidence to cast a question for the state’s Workers’ Compensation Commission to consider.

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 Baptist Mem. Hospital-North Miss. v. Dependents of Slate, 2019 Miss. App. LEXIS 483 (Oct. 1, 2019)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 7.04.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see