Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Associated Press
COLUMBUS
An Ohio Supreme Court ruling that upholds a 2005 state law limiting lawsuits by workers hurt on the job will bring a sense of security to employers and help employees, courts and lawyers dealing with workplace injuries, a lawyer said Tuesday.
In a pair of 6-1 decisions, justices upheld the law that restricts the filing of injury lawsuits against employers by workers who are simultaneously receiving state workers’ compensation benefits. The law requires an employee filing lawsuits to prove the employer acted deliberately to cause the injury.
“For employers generally, it really brings a sense of security as to what the law is because the statute has been in effect since 2005, but there’s been no definitive ruling by the Ohio Supreme Court on whether or not it was constitutional,” said Irene Keyse-Walker, who represents employer Metal & Wire Products Co. of Salem in Northeast Ohio in one of the cases.
The opinion’s thoroughness, retracing the history of workers’ compensation law and court decisions, also is beneficial, she said.
“It’s going to be an opinion that will be helpful on all sorts of legal questions, I think, for years and years to come,” she said.
But the ruling limits the rights of workers in Ohio to pursue full compensation for their injuries, including civil damages for pain and suffering, said Brad Zelasko, of the firm that represents injured Metal & Wire worker Rose Kaminski. Kaminski suffered an injury in 2005 when an 800-pound coil of steel fell on her legs and feet, according to court documents.
“While workers’ compensation is a good program in most situations, there are some cases where people are very seriously hurt because of conduct that historically has been viewed as a workplace intentional wrong, and now they will be very limited in doing that,” Zelasko said.
Each of the court’s decisions dealt with a different section of the Ohio Constitution, which injured workers said were violated by the limits set on their ability to sue their employers even when a workplace condition was “substantially certain to cause injury.”
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