North Carolina: UIM Carrier Has Standing to Seek Determination of Subrogation Lien

Where the employer and its servicing agent paid $528,665.61 in workers’ compensation benefits to an injured employee and the employee was awarded a substantially smaller sum, $285,000.00, in his third party suit against the driver of another vehicle, an UIM insurer that owed excess coverage had standing under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 97–10.2(j) to seek a determination of the employer’s subrogation lien. The court acknowledged that language in an earlier decision appeared to limit the lien determination request to the employer and employee, but the court indicated that earlier language was merely obiter dictum. The court also held that under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 97–10.2(f)(1) and (h), the amount of the lien could not be larger than the amount actually recovered from the third party tortfeasor.

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 Dion v. Batten, 2016 N.C. App. LEXIS 817 (Aug. 2, 2016)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 117.01.

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