Arizona: Law of State Where Benefits Are Paid Controls Important Assignment Rights to Third-Party Claim

The law of the state in which compensation is paid ordinarily governs an employee’s claim against an alleged third-party tortfeasor. Accordingly, where Arizona law gave the injured employee the exclusive right to maintain a third-party action for a period of one year after the injury, but thereafter provided for an absolute assignment to the employer of the injured employee’s cause of action, but Nebraska law—where workers’ compensation benefits had actually been paid—did not, the latter state’s law operated so as not to bar the employee from sharing in a third-party civil action filed by the employer (in Arizona) just prior to the running of the statute of limitations.

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 Jackson v. Eagle KMC L.L.C., 431 P.3d 1197 (Jan. 2, 2019)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 144.02.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see