West Virginia: Adult Daughter’s Dependency Claim Fails Due to Absence of Proof as to Support

The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, in a memorandum decision, affirmed a decision of the state’s Workers’ Compensation Board of Review that denied dependent’s benefits and fatal dependent’s benefits to the daughter of a worker whose death was causally linked to coal workers’ pneumoconiosis. Noting that the daughter had not lived with her father for some 25 years, that other siblings did live with the deceased worker, and that the daughter had received virtually no support from her father during that 25-year period, the Court said she had not shown dependency. The Court also observed that the daughter lived with her boyfriend and had three children, for whom she cared without assistance.

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 McClung v. Gaiser, 2019 W. Va. LEXIS 455 (Sept. 13, 2019)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 96.01.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see