Subrogation

Plaintiff-friendly judges and legislators in various states have gained strength and influence over the last twenty years, resulting in statutes and court decisions inimical to the subrogation and reimbursement rights of workers’ compensation carriers. North Dakota is fighting back. On March 13, 2017, the North Dakota legislature amended § 65-01-09, North Dakota’s workers’ compensation subrogation…

Nebraska has recently become a battleground in the war against workers’ compensation subrogation being waged by trial lawyers. Nebraska is a “tweener” when it comes to workers’ compensation subrogation. It doesn’t provide a carrier with a first money right to recovery of third-party proceeds, as most states do, but neither does it employ a version…

Words matter. On May 22, 2017, the Ohio Court of Appeals paid attention to the specific wording in the Workers’ Compensation Act and ignored the traditional definition given to the term “third party” in workers’ compensation subrogation settings. In McKinney v. Omni Die Casting, Inc., 2017 Ohio – 2949 (Ohio App. 2017), it held for…

In Nevada, when a workers’ compensation carrier is subrogated to the rights of the worker under § 616C.215, the carrier has a lien on the “total proceeds” of any third-party recovery. N.R.S. § 616C.215(5). This is true whether the recovery is by way of judgment, settlement or otherwise. Id. The statute is very clear on this…