United States: Missouri Insurer Allowed to Intervene in Employee’s Third-Party Civil Action

Stressing that allowing a workers’ compensation insurer to intervene in a third-party civil action filed by an injured worker against the purported tortfeasor would not cause delay and would not necessarily cause confusion among potential jurors should the case ever go to trial, a federal district court allowed the requested intervention on discretionary grounds. The court observed that the insurer had not shown that it should be allowed to intervene as a matter of right but indicated further that since the case was still in its early stages and the insurer had apparently expended considerable sums in the underlying workers’ compensation claim, it had a sufficient interest in the civil action to warrant intervention, due to its subrogation rights under the Missouri Workers’ Compensation Act.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the co-Editor-in-Chief and Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law(LexisNexis).

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See Henderson v. Black & Decker (U.S.) Inc., 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 75730 (E.D. Mo. Apr. 20, 2021)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 116.05.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see

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