by Larry Baker
NORTH CAROLINA – The North Carolina Supreme Court in Sturdivant v. NC Dept. of Public Safety overturned the Court of Appeals and clarified, once and for all, the standard a Plaintiff bears to qualify for extended benefits, pursuant to NCGS §97-29. Relying on the language of the 2011 amendment to the Act, as well as Industrial Commission interpretation of that language, the Supreme Court, without any dissenting opinion, determined that total loss of wage-earning capacity means a total loss of the capacity to earn wages in any employment. Thus, in order to qualify for extended benefits, an employee must establish a complete or utter loss of the ability to earn any wages by working. Furthermore, the court stated that the standard is focused on the employee’s personal capacity to earn wages as a consequence of his workplace injury, detached from the economic environment that exists at the time and from the willingness of the employers to extend a job offer. In this context the wage-earning capacity of an employee “concerns the capacity of the employee to do wage earning work, not the likelihood of actually finding a job.”
In doing so, they rejected the Court of Appeals determination that “total loss of wage-earning capacity” was synonymous with “total disability” and that prior cases addressing “total disability” had no bearing on determining if a plaintiff is entitled to extended benefits. The Supreme Court went on to note that the 2023 amendment to the statute (enacted through efforts of Larry Baker of Willson Jones, among others in direct response to the Court of Appeals decision) that also clarified total loss of wage-earning capacity was a different standard was unnecessary given the proper interpretation of the 2011 amendment. Nonetheless, with both statutory and appellate court interpretation of the 2011 statute being the same, plaintiff’s standard for establishing extended benefits is now clear irrespective of when those benefits are claimed.
To speak with a WJCB North Carolina attorney about this decision, email Kelli Smith at [email protected] or 864.272.2667.