Illinois: Parent Corporation Paying Comp Benefits to Subsidiary’s Employee is Immune Only If Obligated to Provide Such Benefits

Where a parent corporation paid workers’ compensation benefits for employees of a subsidiary, it enjoyed immunity from negligence claims under 820 ILCS 305/5(a) (2012) only if it was under a legal obligation to pay the benefits, held an Illinois appellate court. The court indicated an entity could not choose whether to be treated like an employer or like a third party, depending on what appeared the most to its advantage in a particular case. Immunity under § 5(a) could not, therefore, be predicated on a defendant’s payment of workers’ compensation unless the defendant was under some legal obligation to pay. The court added that here, the parent corporation’s “evidence” was limited to a conclusory affidavit. It should have contained facts that were admissible in evidence.

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. Bracketed citations link to lexis.com.

See Burge v. Exelon Generation Co., LLC, 2015 Ill. App. LEXIS 574 (July 30, 2015) [2015 Ill. App. LEXIS 574 (July 30, 2015)]

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 112.01 [112.01]

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

For more information about LexisNexis products and solutions connect with us through our corporate site