Massachusetts: Employer May Not Retaliate Against Worker Filing Third-Party Tort Action Against It

It is axiomatic in Massachusetts—and the significant majority of other American jurisdictions—that an employer may not retaliate against an employee who sustains a work-related injury. The protections afforded under the Bay State’s retaliatory discharge statute [Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 152, § 75B(2)] go even further than similar statutes in other states, at least according to a recent decision by a state appellate court. Not only may an employer not retaliate against a worker because he or she filed a workers' compensation claim, it may not retaliate against a worker who has filed a third-party tort action against the employer. The court reasoned that the right to sue the employer was not grounded so much in common law as it was in the state's Workers' Compensation Act.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Bermudez v. Dielectrics, Inc., 94 Mass. App. Ct. 491 (Nov. 16, 2018)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 104.07.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, See