MO Court of Appeals gets closer to answering THE permanent total disability (PTD) question – can an Employer be held responsible for PTD for a work injury combining with pre-existing disabilities?

The Second Injury Fund (SIF), as you know, protects Employers from PTD when a work-related injury combines with prior injuries and disabilities that the prevents the employee from going back to work.  The Employer pays the PPD associated with the work injury, and the SIF pays the PTD portion of the claim.  Employers are then shielded from PTD in situations where the work injury is not the sole cause of PTD.

Labor and Industrial Relations Commission upholds a Covid denial of compensability

In what may be the first Covid claim on appeal in Missouri, the Commission affirmed a denial of a Covid exposure claim.   Per the attached decision, Claimant argued that since other people at work had Covid, then he must have contracted Covid at work because he refrained from going out in public during the Covid emergency other than going to work.

The Best Lawyers® in America 2025 edition features 7 Harris Dowell Fisher & Young attorneys, with 1 named “Lawyer of the Year,” 5 named Best Lawyers, and 2 Ones to Watch. Congratulations to these lawyers on the well-deserved recognition!

Back in 2017, the Supreme Court of Missouri issued a blockbuster opinion in Mantia v. Missouri Department of Transportation, 529 S.W.3d 804 (Mo banc. 2017). In that case, claimant’s job involved investigating fatal motor vehicle accidents, which also involved viewing dead and mutilated bodies in conjunction with her job duties. Because of viewing mutilated bodies on a regular basis, claimant filed a Mental-Mental psych claim against her employer, the MO Department of Transportation.