Georgia: Employer May Suspend Indemnity Payments When Effects of Aggravation are Over

When an employee has a preexisting condition that limits his or her work capacity before the work-related injury, as soon as the effects of the work-related injury cease, the employer's responsibility for workers' compensation also ceases. The employer is not responsible for compensating the employee until the preexisting condition improves as well or for showing that work exists suitable for an employee with that preexisting disability. Thus, where an employee had a significant disability to his knee at the time he took a job with the employer, but did not disclose that fact, and he suffered a subsequent knee injury when he stepped in a hole while working, the employer could suspend disability benefits as soon as the employee recovered from “the aggravation,” since the employee had returned to his pre-injury condition.

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 EMC v. McDuffie, 2017 Ga. LEXIS 888 (Oct. 16, 2017)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 9.02.

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