The Supreme Court of South Carolina held a deceased employee’s girlfriend — early in the litigation, she had contended she was his common law wife — could not recover workers’ compensation death benefits because she had failed to show that she relied upon the deceased...
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...
An appellate court in Massachusetts affirmed a determination by the Massachusetts Industrial Accident Reviewing Board that denied death benefits to the family of a business owner who sustained fatal injuries in an automobile accident as he traveled to check on...
Citing Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law , and stressing that a surviving spouse’s death benefits claim is not derivative of the injured worker’s claim, a Maryland appellate court found that a settlement agreement and full release, signed only by the injured worker...
Construing the special exception to the Texas version of the exclusive remedy rule—that the survivors of an employee may maintain a wrongful death action against the employer if the employee's death was caused by an intentional act or omission of the...
In a deeply divided (5-4) decision, a Mississippi appellate court held that a deceased employee’s workers’ compensation death benefits could be subject to a lien for unpaid child support in spite of the fact that, prior to the employee’s death, the children had...
A provision in the Alaska Workers’ Compensation Act (Alaska Stat., § 23.30.055) that bars a non-dependent parent from suing the employer for negligence allegedly associated with the death of an employed child is constitutional, held the Supreme Court of Alaska...
Any information or opinions contained in this commentary are not necessarily endorsed by LexisNexis® or its affiliates. Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board (WCAB) jurisdiction is one of the most important threshold issues that an injured worker must establish...
A self-employed spouse, who separated from his wife two years before her work-related death is not entitled to workers’ compensation dependency benefits as he failed to show that he received a substantial portion of support from his estranged wife at the...
Citing a 1990 decision of the Supreme Court of Georgia [ Williams v. Corbett , 260 Ga. 668, 398 SE2d 1 (1990)], as controlling, a state appellate court held that within the context of a workers’ compensation claim, a meretricious relationship works to deny dependency...
Under the general rule in New York, and many other jurisdictions, where an unwitnessed death occurs during the course of a decedent’s employment, a presumption arises that the death arose out of that employment [see N.Y. Work. Comp. Law § 21(1)]. Ordinarily, that...
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...
Where an injured employee and the employer (and carrier) executed a settlement agreement, forwarding it on to the state’s Workers’ Compensation Commission for approval and the employee died from unrelated causes two days before the agreement was formally approved...
A divided Court of Appeals of Arkansas held that the clear language of Ark. Code Ann. § 11–9–527 did not allow for termination of a minor child’s survivor benefits upon termination of the employee’s parental rights or adoption. Six...
The Court of Appeals of Maryland held that when the state’s Commission finds a claimant permanently totally disabled, Md. Code Ann. Lab. & Empl. § 9–640 governs the survival of benefits whether the claimant’s PTD is due solely to accidental injury or to a combination...