Colorado: In Spite of Credit Allowed Employer Related to Out-of-State Death Benefits Paid, Interest Was Owed on Balance of Benefits Due

Where a worker was killed in a work-related accident on the second day after he assumed a new position in Colorado—he had previously worked for the employer in Mississippi—and his survivors were paid death benefits under the Mississippi Act for 148 weeks, after which the employer began to pay benefits at a significantly higher rate under the Colorado Act, a Colorado appellate court held that Colo. Rev. Stat. § 8–42–114 (2015) allowed the employer a credit for one-half of the “Mississippi amounts,” plus one-half of the amounts the survivors received under federal social security law, but the employer nevertheless owed the survivors interest, at eight percent per annum, on the difference between the payments the survivors received during the first 148 months and the amounts they should have received had those benefits actually have been paid under the Colorado Act.

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 Keel v. Industrial Claim Appeals Office, 2016 COA 8, 2016 Colo. App. LEXIS 16 (Jan. 14, 2016) [2016 COA 8, 2016 Colo. App. LEXIS 16 (Jan. 14, 2016)]

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 134.04 [134.04]

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

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