The Ohio General Assembly amended O.R.C. § 4123.56 in 2020, adding paragraph (F). For decades, courts in Ohio had applied and interpreted the continually evolving, and judicially created doctrine of voluntary abandonment when determining entitlement to temporary total disability after an injured worker was terminated for violation of their employer’s written work rules. Over those decades, the courts acknowledged the judicially created nature of the doctrine, while noting that the legislature had yet to address the underlying issues which gave rise to the doctrine: causation between the injured worker’s injury and loss of earnings.
The Ohio General Assembly addressed this issue by adding paragraph (F) to O.R.C. § 4123.56, which states:
If an employee is unable to work or suffers a wage loss as the direct result of an impairment arising from an injury or occupational disease, the employee is entitled to receive compensation under this section, provided the employee is otherwise qualified. If an employee is not working or has suffered a wage loss as the direct result of reasons unrelated to the allowed injury or occupational disease, the employee is not eligible to receive compensation under this section. It is the intent of the General Assembly to supersede any previous judicial decision that applied the doctrine of voluntary abandonment to a claim brought under this section.
In a case of first impression regarding the interpretation of O.R.C. § 4123.56(F), the Supreme Court of Ohio issued its decision in State ex rel. AutoZone Stores, Inc. v. Indus. Comm., Slip Opinion No. 2024-Ohio-5519. This case involved an injured worker who injured his right shoulder in the course of his work for AutoZone. After his injury, Mr. Schomaker worked in a light duty capacity for approximately two and a half months until he was involved in an altercation with a co-worker. AutoZone subsequently terminated Mr. Schomaker’s employment for violating its employment policies. Mr. Schomaker did not return to work for any other employer following his termination from AutoZone, and before he underwent shoulder surgery that was approved in his workers’ compensation claim. Mr. Schomaker requested the payment of temporary total disability beginning on the date of his approved surgery.
In a Per Curiam opinion, the Supreme Court concluded that the 2020 change to the Ohio Revised Code replaced the voluntary abandonment case law with a “direct result” requirement. Noting that the statute requires a causal relationship between the injury and the claimed inability to work or wage loss under O.R.C. § 4123.56, the court stated, “therefore, the inquiry is no longer whether an employee’s departure from the workforce was ‘voluntary’ or ‘involuntary.’ Instead, under O.R.C. § 4123.56(F), employees may be entitled to receive compensation if they demonstrate that they are ‘unable to work or suffer a wage loss as the direct result of an impairment arising from an injury or occupational disease.’” The court further stated that compensation may be denied in situations where an injured worker is not working as the direct result of reasons unrelated to their workers’ compensation injury.
In summarizing their analysis of O.R.C. § 4123.56(F), the court held that the statute does not eliminate the requirement that there be a causal relationship between the allowed injury and an actual loss of earnings, and that the claimed loss of wages, or inability to work, must be directly caused by an “impairment arising from an injury” and not by “reasons unrelated to the allowed injury.” For the injured worker, Mr. Schomaker, the court held that, “when an injured employee has not been working as the direct result of reasons unrelated to the allowed injury, there is no compensable loss of earnings, even if an allowed injury gives rise to a later disability. That a person must be employed to be eligible to receive compensation for loss of earnings is, as AutoZone correctly points out, a fundamental tenet of temporary total disability compensation that predates and transcends the voluntary abandonment doctrine.”
For employers in Ohio, this decision is a welcome departure from the previous decision of the Tenth District Court of Appeals that had held that an inquiry into the reasons an injured worker was not working prior to a request for temporary total disability was inappropriate under O.R.C. § 4123.56(F). Employers in Ohio should once again remain cognizant of the work status of an injured worker at the time a request for temporary total disability is made. This includes considering situations involving terminations, retirements, and perhaps even refusals of bona fide offers of light duty employment. As the Supreme Court of Ohio held, when an injured worker has not been working as the direct result of reasons that are not related to their workers’ compensation injury, their loss of earnings is not compensable.
If you have any questions about this decision and its impact on your business, please contact an attorney in Reminger’s Workers’ Compensation Practice Group.
