North Carolina: Commission's Decision to Dismiss Claim With Prejudice Was not Supported by Record

A North Carolina appellate court reversed a decision by the state's Industrial Commission that had dismissed with prejudice an employee's injury claim for her failure to comply with discovery orders. Finding that there had been no showing that the employer been materially prejudiced, nor had the employer or its carrier come forward with evidence that claimant's delay had impaired their ability to locate witnesses, medical records, treating physicians, or any other data, the appellate court said the Commission's use of the extreme sanction was not justified. As to the employer’s argument that it had been prejudiced by being unable to direct the employee's medical care, the Court stressed that the employer only had the right to direct care when it had accepted the claim. Here, it had not done so.

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 Lauziere v. Stanley Martin Cmtys., LLC, 2020 N.C. App. LEXIS 352 (May 5, 2020)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 126.13.

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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