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North Carolina: Worker’s Death from Accidental Overdose of Narcotics is Compensable

October 06, 2017 (1 min read)

In an unpublished opinion, the Court of Appeals of North Carolina affirmed an award, inter alia, of death benefits to dependents of an injured employee who suffered a compensable back injury in June 2010 and died some four years later, as a result of an accidental overdose of prescribed medications and a previously unknown lung infection. At the time of his death, decedent had been prescribed a cocktail of drugs—narcotics to treat his compensable low back injury, additional medication for treatment of his depression, and other prescription medications.

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 Brady v. Best Buy Co., 2017 N.C. App. LEXIS 844 (Oct. 3, 2017)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, §§ 10.01, 38.03.

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