Massachusetts: Indicted EMT Allowed Workers’ Compensation Benefits While Under Indictment

Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 268A, § 25, which generally allows Massachusetts municipalities to suspend “compensation” while an employee is under indictment for malfeasance, did not proscribe the receipt of workers’ compensation benefits by an EMT/paramedic who had been suspended from his position while under indictment on charges relating to misuse of controlled substances intended for EMS patients, held the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. Workers’ compensation benefits did not constitute compensation within the meaning of § 25. Since the benefits were triggered by injuries that arose in the course of employment, they were not in exchange for services rendered during that employment. The EMT/paramedic suffered an incapacitating ankle injury while transporting a patient. Unable to work, he received workers’ compensation payments for almost one year before their suspension by the City.

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 Benoit v. City of Boston, 2017 Mass. LEXIS 348 (May 16, 2017)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 84.04.

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