February 2010 Dec Page

Question of the Month

Many states provide second or successive injury funds to encourage employers to hire disabled workers. These second injury funds may respond when an employee, who is already disabled, is injured on the job and becomes totally disabled because of the combination of his prior condition and the occupational injury. Without a second injury fund, an employer (or its workers compensation insurer) could be liable for the cost of total disability when, in fact, the occupational accident individually would not result in total disability.

There are many questions that accompany the second injury fund. Some examples are: what injuries are covered; what must the employer pay; what does the fund itself pay; how is the fund subsidized; what other provisions affect the fund? This article answers these questions and, since the second injury fund provisions are based on state law, provides a comparison chart showing how individual states address the fund: Workers Compensation Successive Injury Cases.

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