Ohio: Worker Not Entitled to TTD Compensation Where His Loss of Income Was Due to Voluntary Retirement

Denial of an injured worker’s application for TTD compensation was appropriate where the Commission determined that the worker’s loss of income was due to his voluntary abandonment of his employment in 2012 due to reasons unrelated to a 2009 industrial injury to his knee. While the worker testified that he retired because of difficulties with his knee, the evidence also indicated that he had returned to work following his 2009 injury without medical restrictions and continued to work full-time without restrictions until he retired. A physician did note a flare-up in the worker’s knee some three weeks before retirement, but the physician did not impose restrictions. On cross-examination, the worker also admitted that he began to contemplate retirement four months prior to his actual retirement and before the flare-up with his knee. The court reasoned that where an injured worker left the workforce for reasons unrelated to his or her industrial injury, he or she was not legally entitled to receive payments of TTD compensation because there is no corresponding injury-related loss of earnings to replace.

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 State ex rel. Strahin v. Industrial Comm’n, 2016-Ohio–1323, 2016 Ohio App. LEXIS 1207 (Mar. 29, 2016)

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

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

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