An Illinois appellate court held that where a temporary staffing agency assigns or loans a worker to a borrowing company, both the “lender” and the “borrower” are immune from tort liability under the exclusive remedy provisions of the Illinois...
Colorado’s exclusivity rule is sufficiently broad so as to bar an injured employee from recovering damages via the uninsured motorist/underinsured motorist coverage of a co-employee’s auto policy, held the Supreme Court of Colorado. As long as the allegedly negligent...
Finding a person's common law rights could be limited, but not eliminated, the Supreme Court of Oklahoma held a provision in the state's Workers' Compensation Act [12 O.S. 2011 §§1053A] that allowed death benefits only to a spouse, child, or legal guardian...
An Illinois appellate court, rendering a decision that is consistent with earlier federal court decisions on the same subject, held that an employee's civil action claim for statutory, liquidated damages against her employer for alleged violations of the state's...
A divided Pennsylvania appellate court held a well owner and a separate firm that provided specialized services at the well were not statutory employers of a truck driver who contended he sustained injuries when a faulty storage tank value caused the driver to...
A tort action filed by a worker who had been assigned to a firm that utilized forklifts in its warehouse area cannot proceed since the worker's exclusive remedy was pursuant to the New Jersey Workers' Compensation Act, held a state appellate court. The...
In a decision that is likely to have broad and long-reaching ramifications, a divided Supreme Court of Idaho, following a rehearing in a case decided one year earlier, threw out its earlier decision and adopted a rule that allows an injured employee to sue his...
The putative class action filed by an employee against his employer alleging its use of a fingerprint timekeeping system violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (“BIPA”) was not barred by the exclusive remedy provisions of the Illinois Workers’...
The Minnesota rule that an employer may not be considered “severally liable” along with a defendant, third-party was unaffected by a 2003 amendment to Minn. Stat. § 604.02, subs. 1, held the state’s Supreme Court. Under the clear terms of the statute, the third...
An Iowa appellate court, following the “narrow” exception to co-employee immunity established in Thompson v. Bohlken , 312 N.W.2d 501, 505 (Iowa 1981), held that a state trial court was correct when it granted a defendant/co-employee a judgment notwithstanding...
A common law cause of action for bad-faith failure to pay workers’ compensation benefits may not be pursued against a third-party administrator of a workers’ compensation insurer, held the Supreme Court of Iowa, in a divided (5-2) decision. Answering...
Acknowledging that the 2013 amendment to the so-called “dual capacity” provision of the Oregon Workers’ Compensation Act [Or. Rev. Stat. § 656.018(3)] had narrowed somewhat the immunity enjoyed by officers and directors of the employing corporation, an appellate...
Stressing that although closely related, the “arising out of” [the employment] and the “in the course of employment” concepts are separate and distinct elements of proving a workers' compensation claim, the Court of Appeals of North Carolina held that an employee...
A divided Supreme Court of Minnesota held that a firefighter may proceed against his employer for its alleged discrimination under Minnesota’s Human Rights Act (“HRA”) in spite of the fact that he had already received workers’ compensation benefits for a work-related...
An Arkansas trial court erred in concluding that it had subject-matter jurisdiction over the employee's complaint in which it was alleged that the defendant employed the plaintiff but failed to secure workers’ compensation benefits for the employees....