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Nov 11, 2021

Alaska Supreme Court Says Estate’s Wrongful Death Action is Barred by Exclusivity Even When Comp Benefits are Limited to Burial Expenses

Addressing a difficult factual pattern for the second time, the Supreme Court of Alaska affirmed a trial court’s decision that had granted summary judgment in favor of a general contractor and a building owner who had been sued in a wrongful death action by the estate of an apprentice electrician following that employee’s work-related electrocution death at the construction project [Burke v. Criterion Gen., Inc., 2021 Alas. LEXIS 133 (Nov. 5, 2021). Acknowledging that it might seem harsh that the estate would be denied its day in court in spite of the fact that workers’ compensation benefits had been limited to the statutory $10,000 funeral expense allowance—the employee was unmarried and had no dependents—the Court said nevertheless that the employee’s estate had not been deprived of either procedural due process or substantive due process.

Background

Following the employee’s death, the employee’s mother filed a claim with the Alaska Workers’ Compensation Board, which was rejected because the mother had not met the eligibility requirements for dependent benefits under the Act. The Commission affirmed, and the employee’s mother appealed to the state Supreme Court. In that first decision, the high court declined to address any arguments the mother made on behalf of the employee’s estate because the mother had not been appointed personal representative. Considering the mother’s possible claim as a parent, the Court decided that the Act did not violate her rights to due process or equal protection (for my discussion of the 2018 Alaska Supreme Court decision, click here). The United States Supreme Court denied certiorari [see Burke v. Raven Elec., Inc., 140 S. Ct. 135, 205 L. Ed. 2d 48 (2019)].

Wrongful Death Action

Following the first decision by the state Supreme Court, the employee’s mother was appointed personal representative of the employee’s estate in Augusts 2018 and soon thereafter filed a wrongful death action against the general contractor and the building owner. Both defended on exclusive remedy grounds based upon 2004 legislation that had extended both the coverage requirement and the exclusive remedy defenses so as to include contractors and project owners such as the defendants.

Alaska Intervenes

The state of Alaska intervened, contending that the estate had no separate legal right to sue in tort because, as relevant here, the state legislature had eliminated and replaced the wrongful death statute with the Workers’ Compensation Act. Consequently, the State argued, there could be no procedural due process violation. The State maintained that the amendments did not violate the estate’s substantive due process rights because the compensation, while limited to a “modest sum of burial costs,” was rationally related to the purpose of the Act, identified as “to provide relatively quick compensation regardless of fault such that a person and her dependents will not be impoverished by a workplace injury.”

Summary Judgment

The estate moved for summary judgment, arguing that the 2004 exclusive liability expansion violated the estate’s due process rights because it left the estate without an effective remedy. The trial court rejected the estate’s argument and dismissed the wrongful death action, entering judgment against the estate. The estate appealed.

Alaska Supreme Court Affirms

As with many constitutionality challenges, the Court analyzed both the issue of procedural due process and substantive due process. A complete discussion and analysis of those issues is beyond the scope of this post. As to the procedural due process issue, the Court stated:

The purpose of the Act is to provide employees and their dependents adequate income to replace that lost through a work-related injury or death while encouraging a return to work. We have previously recognized that the Act provides uneven benefits. [The employee] had no dependents suffering economic loss by her death; providing funeral expenses as workers’ compensation—thus eliminating the Estate’s potential economic loss for [the employee’s] death—and allowing Criterion and Alaska USA to use exclusive liability as an affirmative defense does not deprive the Estate of all remedies or all possible access to courts. [The employee’s family members may feel they have been wronged by a system that, in this particular case, provided minimal compensation, imposed only a small work-safety-violation fine, and offered no other means to hold accountable those whom the Estate considers responsible for her death. But considering the Act as a whole, extension of the exclusive remedy defense does not so diminish the Estate’s economic recovery as to deprive it of all access to the courts[Opinion, p. 16-17, citations omitted].

As to the substantive due process issue, the Court again acknowledged that the result would seem harsh to the employee’s family. The Court cited decisions from Montana and New Hampshire, in which courts had expressed concern with similarly low levels of compensation for the estates of workers who die without dependents. The Court continued:

As the Montana Supreme Court wrote: “It is easy to opine that the Legislature could have done better in providing for family members after a worker’s death, even those who are non-dependents of the worker. Work-related death is traumatic, final, and adversely impacts a family forever” [quoting Walters v. Flathead Concrete Prods., Inc., 2011 MT 45, 359 Mont. 346, 249 P.3d 913,921(Mont. 2011)]. But we agree with that court that the appropriate amount of compensation is subject to debate and that the legislature could rationally decide to provide a minimal payment to the estates of employees who die without dependents while providing more to injured employees and the dependent survivors of employees who die in work-related accidents [Opinion, p. 21, citations omitted].

Considering the entire Act, including the 2004 amendments, the Court concluded that the Act did not violate the estate’s substantive due process rights.

For additional discussion of this difficult issue, see Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 100.05[4].