Oklahoma: Multiple Injury Trust Liability Hinges on Prior Adjudication of Disability

Where a claimant, who had no previously adjudicated injury, sustained a work-related injury in 2009, and a trial court determined that as a result of the 2009 incident the claimant had sustained 24 percent PPD to her back and five percent PPD for psychological overlay, a simultaneous finding by the trial court that the claimant also had six percent preexisting PPD to her back and eight percent preexisting PPD for psychological overlay was not the sort of finding that would allow the claimant to recover PTD benefits from the state’s Multiple Injury Trust Fund, held a divided Supreme Court of Oklahoma. Stressing that the claimant had to be a “physically impaired person” as defined by Okla. Stat., tit. 85, § 171 and reversing the state’s Court of Civil Appeals, the majority of the Court held that claimant’s adjudication of prior disability [see J.C. Penny Co. v. Crumby, 584 P.2d 1325 (Okla. 1978)] had to have been made prior to the trial court’s order; it could not be contemporaneous.

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. Bracketed citations link to lexis.com.

See Ball v. Multiple Injury Trust Fund, 2015 OK 64, 2015 Okla. LEXIS 98 (Oct. 13, 2015) [2015 OK 64, 2015 Okla. LEXIS 98 (Oct. 13, 2015)]

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 91.01 [91.01]

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

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