The question nobody expects to be complicated

If you live in one state, work for a company based in another, and get hurt in a third, you may be entitled to Connecticut workers' compensation benefits even though you have never worked a day inside Connecticut.

Here is the situation we see regularly. A sales representative lives in Georgia. He works for a company headquartered in Connecticut. He travels to a convention in Dallas, catches his foot on a cable, and tears up his knee.

Where does he file his workers' compensation claim?

Most people assume Texas, because that is where the injury happened. Others assume Georgia, because that is where he lives. Both answers treat this as a question with one obvious response. It usually is not.

The benefits available in each state are different, sometimes dramatically so. Filing in the wrong place, or simply accepting whatever the insurance company offers first, can cost an injured worker a great deal of money.

Connecticut has three doors, not one

Connecticut's test comes from a 1991 Connecticut Supreme Court decision, Cleveland v. U.S. Printing Ink, Inc. Under that case, Connecticut's workers' compensation law may be applied when Connecticut is:

1. the place of the injury, or
2. the place of the employment contract, or
3. the place of the employment relation.

The word that matters most in that list is "or." These are three separate paths, and an injured worker only needs one of them.

This is why the Dallas convention does not end the analysis. It closes the first door. The second and third are still open, and for an employee of a Connecticut company, they are often the ones that matter.

Later decisions have refined how this works. At a minimum, there has to be a genuinely significant relationship between Connecticut and either the employment contract or the employment relationship. A passing connection is not enough. But a real one does not require that the worker ever set foot in the state.

What facts actually decide it

The second and third doors turn on the details of the working relationship, not on where the accident happened. The questions worth answering early include:

• Where was the worker hired? Where was the offer made and accepted, and where was any written agreement signed?
• Who supervises the work, and where does that supervisor sit?
• Where does the worker report, call in, submit expenses, and send paperwork?
• Where is payroll run from, and which state appears on the pay records?
• Where is the employer's workers' compensation policy written, and what does it say about out-of-state employees?
• How much of the work, over time, touches Connecticut?

None of these is decisive standing alone. Taken together, they are what a Connecticut administrative law judge weighs in deciding whether the relationship to this state is significant enough.

This is also why these cases are worth looking at carefully rather than guessing. Two workers at the same company, hurt the same day, can land in different places depending on how they were hired and who they answered to.

More than one state can have jurisdiction

People often assume that exactly one state owns the claim, the way only one court can have venue. Workers' compensation does not work that way. The same injury can qualify under the laws of two or three states at once.

That is not a problem. It is a choice, and it is worth making deliberately, because the systems are not interchangeable:

• Weekly benefit amounts differ enormously. Connecticut calculates temporary total benefits at 75% of after-tax average weekly earnings, and its maximum weekly rate is among the highest in the country. Many states pay a lower percentage of gross wages against a much lower cap.
• Medical treatment rules differ. Who picks the treating doctor, and how much say the insurance company has over care, varies by state and can shape the entire course of a recovery.
• Permanency is valued differently. The schedules that assign a number of weeks to a body part are not uniform. The same shoulder can be worth very different amounts depending on where the claim sits.
• Settlement practice differs. How claims are resolved, what gets closed out, and what role a judge plays in approving the deal are all state-specific.

What the law does prevent is double recovery. Benefits paid under one state's system are generally credited against what another state owes for the same injury. The worker does not collect twice, but that is a reason to choose carefully, not a reason to treat the choice as unimportant.

Where you live matters, but not the way you would think

Residency is part of the analysis, and it cuts in both directions.

Connecticut's definition of "employee" was narrowed in 1993 with respect to people who live outside the state. The practical effect is that the analysis is not identical for a Connecticut resident and an out-of-state resident, and an out-of-state worker's connection to Connecticut has to be a real one.

The lesson is not that out-of-state workers are shut out. It is that nobody should assume the answer in either direction. We have seen workers told by an adjuster that they have no Connecticut claim when they did, and we have seen workers assume they had one when the facts did not support it.

This is a question to have answered by someone who handles these claims, early, before anyone commits to a course of action.

If someone else caused the injury, there are two questions, not one

Many out-of-state injuries involve a third party. The convention center that left the cable across the aisle. The other driver. The equipment manufacturer. When that is true, the worker may have both a workers' compensation claim and a separate personal injury case.

Here is the part that surprises even experienced lawyers: the state whose workers' compensation law applies and the state whose tort law applies are not decided by the same analysis.

The Connecticut Supreme Court has made clear that the three-part test described above governs claims for workers' compensation benefits, not tort claims. Choice of law in the injury case follows its own rules.

So one accident can produce two separate choice-of-law questions, and they can come out differently. The compensation claim may belong in Connecticut while the injury case belongs somewhere else entirely. Both need to be analyzed, and they need to be coordinated, because the compensation insurer will generally have a lien on the recovery in the injury case.

What to do if this is your situation

Report the injury right away, to your employer. Whatever state ends up handling the claim, a prompt report protects you. Delay is the first thing an insurance company looks for.

Understand that the clock is running in every state at once. Each state has its own filing deadlines, and they run independently. Time spent waiting to see what one state's insurer decides is time coming off the deadline everywhere else.

Do not assume the first state that contacts you is the right one. The adjuster who calls may be handling the claim under the law of whichever state the policy was written in. That is not the same thing as the state where you have the strongest claim.

Be careful about accepting benefits before you understand the options. Accepting payments is not always irreversible, but it can complicate matters, and it is far easier to choose the right forum at the start than to explain later why you did not.

Gather the paperwork that answers the jurisdiction questions. Your offer letter or employment agreement, pay stubs, the name and location of your supervisor, your expense reports, and anything showing where you reported and how you were managed.

A note for referring attorneys

If you handle personal injury work and a case lands on your desk involving a traveling employee, the jurisdiction question should be answered before anything else. It determines whether there is a Connecticut compensation claim at all, which state's benefits your client should be pursuing, and whether a compensation lien is going to attach to the recovery you are chasing.

It comes up more often than people expect. Sales representatives, consultants, traveling nurses, long-haul drivers, technicians who cover a multi-state territory, and remote employees hired by Connecticut companies who have never visited the office. Every one of them is a jurisdiction question waiting to happen.

We are always glad to take a look at one of these, and there is no charge for the conversation.

Talk to us

We have represented injured workers in Connecticut for forty years, including many who were hurt far from home. If you were injured while traveling for a Connecticut employer, or you are a lawyer with a client in that position, contact our office for a free consultation.

This article is general information about Connecticut law and is not legal advice. Every case turns on its own facts. Deadlines in workers' compensation cases are strict, and the law changes. Speak with an attorney about your specific situation.