Illinois: In Third Party Action, Employer Owes 25 Percent Attorney Fee on Value of Future Medical Care

Where attorneys for an injured worker bring a successful action against a third party to recover damages for personal injuries sustained by the worker in the course of his employment, thereby enabling the worker’s employer to obtain reimbursement of the compensation benefits that it is obligated to pay under the Workers’ Compensation Act, the Act requires the employer to pay 25% of the gross amount it obtains in reimbursement as attorney fees, absent some other agreement [see 820 ILCS 305/5(b)]. The gross amount of reimbursement subject to attorney fees includes not only workers’ compensation benefits already paid at the time of the third-party recovery, but also the amount of such benefits the employer will be relieved from having to pay in the future by reason of the worker’s recovery in the third-party action. Thus, the value of future medical care should be included in this calculation, held the Supreme Court of Illinois.

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 Bayer v. Panduit Corp. Area Erectors, 2016 IL 119553, 2016 Ill. LEXIS 772 (Sept. 22, 2016)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 117.03.

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