Ohio: Court Strikes Down Provision Requiring Schedule Benefits to Be Paid Weekly, Instead of Lump Sum

Under the one-subject rule, set forth in the Ohio Constitution [art. II, § 15(D)], no bill may contain more than one “subject” and that subject must be clearly expressed in the bill’s title. An Ohio appellate court held that the portion of the 2012 “Mid-Biennium Budget Review Bill” [H.B. 487] that amended the period for paying scheduled loss benefits to injured workers under Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 4123.57(B) violated the one-subject rule. Prior to the passage of H.B. 487, the Bureau of Workers’ Compensation allowed injured workers to be paid the entire scheduled loss benefit in a lump sum rather than on a weekly basis over the full number of weeks specified by statute. H.B. 487 changed that, dictating that scheduled loss payments must be issued in weekly installments. The appellate court held the amendment to § 4123.57(B) lacked any relationship to the other wide-ranging provisions in the 1,788-page bill. The amendment accordingly violated the one subject rule.

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 Kljun v. Morrison, 2016-Ohio–2939 (Ct. App., May 12, 2016)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 80.05.

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