Arkansas: Employer Cannot Be Joint Tortfeasor for Purposes of Apportionment of Fault

Construing the state’s version of the Uniform Contribution Among Tortfeasors Act [see Ark. Code Ann. §§ 16-61-201, et seq. (UCATA)], an Arkansas appellate court held an employer immune from tort liability under the state’s Workers’ Compensation Act could not be a “party” against whom fault could be apportioned. Accordingly, a defendant could not reduce its “share” of fault, and therefore, its share of liability pursuant to the UCATA in a civil action filed against it by an employee who suffered a traumatic amputation of his foot and a portion of his leg in a work-related accident. Quite simply put, the immune employer did not have “joint and several liability in tort.”

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 Industrial Iron Works v. Hodge, 2020 Ark. App. LEXIS 61 (Jan. 29, 2020)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 121.02.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see

Sign up for the free LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation enewsletter at www.lexisnexis.com/wcnews.