New Jersey: High Court Says Employer May Have to Reimburse Employee for Medical Marijuana

Agreeing that an injured employee had sufficiently shown that medical marijuana represented reasonable and necessary medical treatment under New Jersey’s Workers’ Compensation Act, the Supreme Court of New Jersey affirmed a decision by a lower appellate court that held an employer could be required to reimburse an employee for the substance that is still illegal, even for medicinal purposes at a federal level. The Court discounted the employer’s contention that New Jersey’s version of the Compassionate Use Act was preempted by the federal Controlled Substance Act. The Court also found the employer did not face a credible threat of federal aiding and abetting or criminal conspiracy charges.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the co-Editor-in-Chief and 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 Hager v. M&K Construction, 2021 N.J. LEXIS 332 (April 13, 2021)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 94.06.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see

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