Disability Law

Case Law Update: Court of Appeals in Atlanta Re-Emphasizes That Employers Bear the Burden of Proof if a Death at Work is Due to Unexplained Reasons

By Jack E. Clay

On July 10, 2008 the Georgia Court of Appeals decided the case of Keystone Auto v. Hall, 292 Ga. App. 645 (2008). This is a case in which an employee died on the job after having what appears to have been a heart attack. Heart cases are treated especially by Georgia Workers' Compensation laws. O.C.G.A. § 34-9-1 (4) requires an employer in a heart case to prove by a preponderance of the evidence of the conditions were attributable to the performance of usual work of employment before they can be considered an injury.

Perhaps this case is about the heart attack that wasn't. Allow me to explain. In this case, there seems to have been a failure of the doctors to reach a consensus of the exact cause of the claimant's death. Based upon the lack of clarity, the Administrative Law Judge held that the employer failed to overcome a presumption by demonstrating that the claimant's death did not arise out of his employment. Furthermore, the ALJ noted that this claim would not be compensable absent the unexplained death presumption found in Georgia Workers' Compensation Law.

This case is positive for injured workers in Georgia as it upholds the unexplained death presumption as found in Zamora v. Coffee General Hospital, 162 Ga. App. 82 (1982). An employer must rebut a presumption that an employee's death arose out of and in the course of employment if he or she was found dead at the place or he or she could have reasonably been expected to be in the performance of his or her job duties and the death was unexplained. Although in Keystone Auto v. Hall the doctors believed that the claimant had a heart attack, the medical evidence was not definitive as to the cause of death.

This is a good legal decision in that it reinforces the notion that the burden is in the employer to disprove that an employee's on-the-job death is compensable when such death is due to unexplained reasons. In workers' compensation law and other areas of law, either side of a dispute may bear the burden of proof in a case. This presumption can be powerful in close cases where the evidence is not clear as in this case. It is also important to note that in workers' compensation cases, the claimant bears the burden of proof most of the time.

If a friend or loved one has died in an on-the-job accident and there are lingering questions, please call our office for a free consultation. We will do our best to answer your questions in a professional and dignified manner and discuss death benefits under the workers' compensation system.

Full post as published by Georgia Law Blog on December 10, 2008 (boomark / email).