United States: IRS Employee May Not Sue for Stress Associated With Filing Injury Claim

A federal district court dismissed a civil action filed by an IRS employee who sought money damages from the Service and from its Workers’ Compensation Branch for “undue work and stress” associated with pulling together the records and other physical evidence she needed to pursue her work-related injury claim. The court determined that her sole remedy was under the Federal Employees’ Compensation Act. The court added that where, as here, the Secretary of Labor had determined the FECA applied, the district court had no jurisdiction to hear the dispute.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the 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 Coachman v. IRS Worker Comp., 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 37226 (S.D. Ind. Mar. 4, 2020)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 100.03.

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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