NWCDN Members regularly post articles and summary judgements in workers’ compensations law in your state.
Select a state from the dropdown menu below to scroll through the state specific archives for updates and opinions on various workers’ compensation laws in your state.
Contact information for NWCDN members is also located on the state specific links in the event you have additional questions or your company is seeking a workers’ compensation lawyer in your state.
If you are a regular reader of our newsletter, you know that there was a
challenge pending in the 13th Court of Appeals to the old Seabolt standard for
determining entitlement to Lifetime Income Benefits. The challenge boils
down to whether “total loss of use” of a body part as stated in the current
LIBs statute really means “total” and whether loss of use under the current
LIBs statute means loss of function as a member of the body, or loss of
function in regard to employability. At the Zoom trial held in this case, the
trial court judge determined that the old standard still applied and that the
worker could not work using his hand, despite the video evidence that showed
the worker using his hand while working for himself. Well, lo and behold, well
after the fact and during the course of the carrier’s appeal to the 13th Court
of Appeals, SLS received an anonymous letter in the mail. We will leave
you to wonder what the letter said, but it did mention in closing that SLS did
a good job at the trial, which was a nice compliment having nothing to do with
the merits of the case. Given that the trial was held by Zoom with limited
participants, we wonder how the writer of the letter knew so much!
In the meantime, the 13th Court of Appeals issued a Memorandum opinion on
October 12, 2023 dodging the legal issue it was asked to address, and holding
that “the doctrine of vertical stare decises” required the Court to follow the
precedent of the Texas Supreme Court as established law affirming the use of
the Seabolt
standard to new law cases. However, the precedents the Court cited were
not cases where any party directly challenged the Seabolt standard itself. The
cases merely applied that standard. No challenge was made in those cases
on the basis that under the current LIBs statute employability is not relevant
to the application of the statutory language of “total loss of use.” The LIBs
statute contains no qualifier indicating that employability is determinative of
entitlement. The Court of Appeals case is not yet final.
You can read the
decision here.
Copyright 2023, Stone Loughlin & Swanson, LLP