Utah: Statute Placing 12-Year Outside Limit on Workers’ Compensation Benefits is Constitutional

In another important constitutional challenge case, the Supreme Court of Utah held the state’s Labor Commission appropriately denied and dismissed two workers’ claims for additional PD benefits as untimely under Utah Code Ann. § 34A-2-417(2)(a)(ii). In each case, the worker had been injured in a workplace accident, filed a request for compensation within six years of the accident in accordance with Utah Code § 34A-2-417(2)(a)(i), and each had his condition worsen after an initial determination of compensation. As a result, each filed for additional benefits after 12 years from the date of the original accident. Each claim was denied by an ALJ on the basis that he had failed to “meet the employee's burden of proving that the employee is due the compensation claimed” within the twelve-year period described in § 34A-2-417(2)(a)(ii). The Court indicated the 12-year limitation was a statute of repose—and not a statute of limitations. It further acknowledged that a statute of repose was more easily subject to constitutional attack than a statute of limitation. It nevertheless held that the particular 12-year statute was not unconstitutional as it had been contentiously debated in the Legislature and was a reasonable and non-arbitrary means of achieving the valid legislative purposes—to end the prolonged and uncertain liability for both insurance companies and employers and reduce the associated insurance premiums.

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 Waite v. Utah Labor Comm’n, 2017 UT 86, 2017 Utah LEXIS 202 (Dec. 1, 2017)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 80.04.

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