South Dakota: Wages From Multiple Employers Should Be Aggregated to Compute Injured Employee’s Average Weekly Wage

Adopting the “growing minority view” identified in Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the Supreme Court of South Dakota held that the wages an injured employee earned at three, unrelated employments should be aggregated for purposes of computing her average weekly wage and, therefore, her compensation rate under the state’s Workers’ Compensation Law. The employer at the time of the employee’s injury had argued that the wages from the employments should not be aggregated because they were not similar or related. Observing that the case was one of first impression for the state and quoting Larson extensively, the Court disagreed, saying it could see no reason why the employments must be similar or related since the overall theory of workers' compensation law was “designed to compensate an employee or his family for the loss of his income-earning ability.” With its holding, the Court reversed a decision by an administrative law judge and a circuit court that used only the employee’s wages from the employer at whose job she was injured to compute here AWW.

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 

See Wheeler v. Cinna Bakers, LLC, 2015 SD 25, 2015 S.D. LEXIS 60 (May 6, 2015) 

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 93.03 

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

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