Vermont: Employer Allowed Credit for Post-Injury “Wages” Paid under Collective Bargaining Agreement

In a divided decision, the Supreme Court of Vermont held that an employer should have been allowed a credit against future workers’ compensation benefits owed to an injured worker where the worker’s claim was initially denied and the employer accordingly paid claimant for a nonoccupational disability under the terms of a collective bargaining agreement, and where the claim was subsequently established and the employer then paid the worker retroactive temporary total disability (TTD) payments. The majority reasoned that the worker had received more from the employer that she would have had the claim had been established from the beginning. Citing the Court’s earlier holding in Yustin v. Department of Public Safety, the majority indicated it would be unfair to allow the worker a double recovery. Justice Robinson dissented, citing, among other things, Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law.

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 Conant v. Entergy Corporation, 2016 VT 74 (July 8, 2016).

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 82.01.

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

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