Idaho: Negligent Employer is Not Entitled to Subrogation Rights Involving Employee’s Third-Party Tort Claim

Idaho’s 1987 adoption of comparative negligence [see Idaho Code § 6–801] and the abrogation of joint and several liability did not affect the rule established in Liberty Mutual Insurance Company v. Adams, 91 Idaho 151, 417 P.2d 417 (1966), that an employer who is concurrently negligent in the worker’s injury is not entitled to subrogation against the injured worker’s third-party recovery. The court indicated that to allow such a recovery would be contrary to the policy of the law that holds the employer, or its subrogee, the insurance carrier, should not profit from the wrong of the employer. Accordingly, where the injured worker settled a third-party claim for $75,000 and the employer sought to recoup its workers’ compensation outlay, the Court said the injured worker should have been allowed to argue that the employer was partially at fault and, therefore, could not recover any of its outlay from the worker’s third-party settlement.

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 Maravilla v. J.R. Simplot Co., 2016 Ida. LEXIS 427 (Dec. 30, 2016)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, §§ 121.03, 121.09.

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