Pennsylvania: Employer Gets No Subrogation Rights for Recovery under State’s Motor Vehicle Responsibility Law

In Pennsylvania, as in most states, an employer or carrier who has paid out workers’ compensation benefits enjoys a strong statutory subrogation right in any third-party recovery that the injured worker may enjoy. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania held that the State Police, as the employer of a state trooper who was seriously injured when his police vehicle was hit by a tractor-trailer, did notenjoy such a subrogation right against the trooper’s third-party recovery under the state’s Motor Vehicle Financial Responsibility Act where the State Police’s outlay had not been for workers’ compensation benefits, but rather for benefits under the state’s Heart and Lung Act (53 Pa. Stat. § 637). 

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 Pennsylvania St. Police v. Workers’ Comp. Appeal Bd. (Bushta), 2018 Pa. LEXIS 2583 (May 29, 2018)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 116.01.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see