Utah: High Court Reiterates Meaning of “Basic Work Activities” for Purposes of PTD Benefits

Generally speaking, in order to qualify for permanent total disability benefits, the Utah employee must show, in relevant part, that he or she has an impairment or combination of impairments that limit the employee’s ability to do “basic work activities” [Utah Code § 34A–2–413]. Reversing a lower court decision and citing its earlier decision in Provo City v. Utah Labor Commission, 2015 UT 32, 345 P.3d 1242, the Supreme Court of Utah held that "only those impairments that strike at the heart of the abilities and aptitudes that are necessary to most jobs—i.e., only those impairments that meaningfully inhibit an employee from performing the core tasks of a wide swath of jobs to such an extent that it would be unreasonable for an employer to ask the employee to perform those tasks—can be said to limit an employee’s ability to do basic work activities. Utilizing that definition, the Court held the Labor Commission had appropriately denied an employee’s request for PTD benefits where an independent medical panel concluded that the employee could perform medium-duty work as long as he was able to be absent from work occasionally, elevate his legs for five to ten minutes out of every hour, and take occasional unscheduled breaks during the day. The panel also opined that, as a general matter, the employee was able to perform basic work activities; among other things, it found that he could concentrate, commute, communicate, work, remain at work for the scheduled time, and cope with the work setting.

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 Oliver v. Utah Labor Comm’n, 2017 UT 39, 2017 Utah LEXIS 113 (July 25, 2017)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 84.01.

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