Post-Retirement Temporary Total Compensation – Ohio Supreme Court Rules “No”
In a recent case before the Ohio Supreme court, it issued an unanimous opinion ruling that “when a claimant voluntarily retires from the workforce following an injury, he or she becomes ineligible for a new period of temporary total disability while recovering from a post-retirement surgery.” This case involved the Ohio Industrial Commission. The Supreme Court upheld the denial of temporary total compensation, stating: “Because temporary-total-disability compensation is intended to compensate an injured worker for loss of earnings while the industrial injury heals, a claimant who is no longer part of the workforce can have no lost earnings.”
This case is fact-specific and it was found that the injured worker was not entitled to temporary total compensation because several years earlier he began receiving social security retirement benefits. If you are planning to retire, you should contact an experienced Cincinnati workers’ compensation attorney like Mark L. Newman to discuss if your retirement will affect your entitlement to workers’ compensation benefits.