Oklahoma: “Crafty Gamesmanship” Earns Insurer a Date in Court for Bad-Faith Failure to Pay

The Supreme Court of Oklahoma, in a divided decision, held that an employee could maintain a bad-faith action against a workers’ compensation insurer alleging that following an award of compensation benefits by the state’s Workers’ Compensation Court (WCC), the insurer withheld employee’s benefits on 26 separate occasions. The insurer’s contention that the district court lacked jurisdiction to hear the case since the employee had failed to obtain a WCC order stating the amounts remained unpaid or that benefits had otherwise not been provided as ordered was misplaced, said the majority of the state’s high court. The majority added that under the rule established in Summers v. Zurich Am. Ins. Co., 2009 OK 33, 213 P.3d 565, an order of the WCC that clearly identifies previously ordered benefits and finds that an insurer failed to demonstrate good cause for its delay in, or noncompliance with, providing court ordered benefits satisfies the certification requirements. The majority concluded that barring the injured employee from pursuing a bad-faith claim against the insurer for the latter’s “crafty gamesmanship” clearly violated Summers and the policy rational underlying the Oklahoma Workers’ Compensation Act.

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 Meeks v. Guarantee Ins. Co., 2017 OK 17, 2017 Okla. LEXIS 18 (Feb. 28, 2017)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 104.05.

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