Ohio: For PTD Purposes, “Sustained” Employment Need Not Be Full-Time

Indicating that permanent total disability is defined as the inability to perform sustained remunerative employment due to the allowed conditions in the claim [Ohio Admin. Code § 4121–3–34(B)(1), emphasis added], the Ohio Supreme Court held that work is “sustained” if it consists of an “ongoing pattern of activity” [2017 Ohio LEXIS 993]. Indeed, the Court indicated that sustained work need not be regular or daily, but may be intermittent and occasional—even part-time. Accordingly, where a medical report indicated that the claimant was capable of sustained, sedentary remunerative employment of up to four hours daily, the Commission could find that the claimant had not suffered PTD. The Court added that the Commission had discretion in each case to determine whether part-time work constituted sustained remunerative employment.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is the co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See State ex rel. Bonnlander v. Hamon, 2017-Ohio–4003, 2017 Ohio LEXIS 993 (May 20, 2017)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 83.03.

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