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Workers' Compensation

Maryland: Employee’s Broad Release Does Not Bar Subsequent Death Benefits Claim by Surviving Spouse

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 workerand not the spouse, could not operate so as to bar her subsequent death benefits claim. The court added that in the workers’ compensation case that had been settled, there was but one claimant—the injured worker. The spouse was not a party and she was not bound by a document that she had not signed.

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 In re Collins, 2019 Md. App. LEXIS 640 (Aug. 2, 2019)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 98.01.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see



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