North Carolina: Employer and Carrier Lose Reimbursement Right Due to Special Endorsement in Employer's Auto Policy

In a divided decision, the Supreme Court of North Carolina held an employer and its carrier could not be reimbursement for the outlay of workers' compensation benefits paid to an insured worker where South Carolina motor vehicle law prohibited such reimbursement and the North Carolina insurance policy contained an endorsement making the policy subject to the South Carolina underinsured motorist law. Moreover, said the majority, the fact that the employee's widow had sought and received workers' compensation death benefits under the North Carolina Workers' Compensation Act made no difference.

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 Walker v. K&W Cafeterias, 2020 N.C. LEXIS 692 (Aug. 14, 2020)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 110.05.

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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