United States: North Dakota Need Not Subordinate its Workers’ Comp Death Benefits Statute to Colorado’s More Liberal Provisions

The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals held that the widow of a Colorado resident killed in a traffic accident while working in North Dakota could not successfully challenge—on constitutional grounds—a North Dakota statute that suspended her previously awarded death benefits while she pursued supplemental benefits in Colorado, and which further, would have required her to reimburse the state’s Workforce Safety and Insurance Fund (“WSI”) if her Colorado claim proved successful. Noting that the central question was one of first impression, the 8th Circuit added that the North Dakota statute satisfied rational basis review. The Court also reiterated that a State need not substitute the statutes of other states for its own statutes dealing with a subject matter concerning which it is competent to legislate.

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 DeCrow v. North Dak. Workforce Safety & Ins. Fund, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 13877 (8th Cir., July 31, 2017)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 141.04.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see