The Litigation

The DOT appealed to the workers compensation board (the Board), claiming Cochran was not entitled to permanent total disability because he had voluntarily retired with no intention of returning to work; therefore, he had not lost any earning capacity. The DOT also complained of the judge awarding the benefits to Cochran after his out-of-network surgery.

The Board affirmed the commissioner, reasoning the commissioner could have found Cochran’s 2013 surgery was “reasonable or medically necessary,” and noting that state workers compensation law, Conn. Gen. Stat. §31-307(a), did not inhibit a retiree’s right or ability to collect permanent disability. The Board also found that the commissioner’s decision to backdate Cochran’s permanent total disability benefits to 2017 had been made based on a solid evidentiary foundation.

The DOT then appealed to the Connecticut appellate courts, arguing the statute cited by the commissioner and the Board did not permit a subsequent award of permanent total disability to individuals who, like Cochran, had voluntarily retired before the benefits were requested. The DOT also reasserted its argument that awarding benefits for Cochran’s out-of-network surgery had been improper. The appellate court reversed the Board, stating that, when an employee accepts “an incentivized early retirement benefits package” with no intention of seeking further employment, “it cannot be said that his injury resulted in his total incapacity to work.” The judges, having issued their ruling based on the DOT’s first argument, did not reach a decision on the second.

Cochran appealed.

What the Supreme Court of Connecticut Said

The justices first tackled what it meant when an injury “resulted in a total incapacity to work” (emphasis added). Cochran interpreted the phrase as connected to an employee’s “original compensable workplace injury,” no matter when the permanent incapacity arose. The DOT, however, argued Cochran’s voluntary retirement diverted the causal chain of events and precluded an award of permanent total disability; a party seeking permanent total disability also needed to be willing but unable to work as a condition of permanent total disability.

The issue boiled down to proximate causation: an employee would be entitled to total disability under Conn. Gen. Stat. §31-307 if the original compensable injury was “a proximate cause of the claimant's total incapacity to work.” The Supreme Court of Connecticut had tackled a separate but similar question in Laliberte v. United Security, Inc., 801 A.2d 783 (Conn. 2002). In that case, a man’s total disability benefits ceased when he was put in prison because his total incapacity to work was now due to imprisonment, rather than his disability. In their decision to reinstate the man’s total disability benefits, the justices pointed out that one, Conn. Gen. Stat. §31-307 did not contain an exclusion for those in prison; and two, the man’s incarceration did not change his entitlement to total disability benefits because he was still unable to work due to his work-based compensable injury.

The DOT argued that Laliberte was distinguishable for two reasons: one, the plaintiff in Laliberte suffered a compensable injury and had begun receiving his total disability benefits before he was imprisoned, whereas Cochran did not receive total disability benefits until after he had voluntarily retired. Two, the plaintiff had also expressed a desire to be employed that was thwarted by his imprisonment; when Cochran voluntarily retired, he stated he did not intend to work anywhere else.

The court disagreed. The Laliberte case was decided based on how Conn. Gen. Stat. §31-307 lacked a specific exclusion preventing incarcerated individuals from receiving total disability benefits. The man’s inability to work due to his compensable injury did not magically disappear when he was incarcerated. The justices in Laliberte had not referenced either the man’s willingness to work or what events led to his exit from the workforce. Imposing an exclusion on either basis was the job of the state legislature, not the courts.

The justices of the Supreme Court of Connecticut ruled in favor of Cochran. However, since the appellate court had not addressed the DOT’s second assertion that it had been improper for the workers compensation commissioner to award Cochran permanent partial disability after his out-of-network surgery, the justices also declined to do so.

The appellate court’s decision was reversed and sent back to that court to make a decision regarding only the DOT’s second claim.

Editor’s Note: Part of the problem with the DOT’s arguments against Cochran’s receipt of total disability benefits was how those arguments added language to Conn. Gen. Stat. §31-307. The DOT argued Cochran’s voluntary retirement and stated intentions not to rejoin the workforce precluded an award for permanent total disability. However, two other workers compensation statutes showed how both of these arguments were wrong.

First, Conn. Gen. Stat. §31-308(a) specifically required those receiving partial disability benefits to be “ready and willing to perform other work in the same locality” in order to receive their benefits. If Connecticut lawmakers had wanted to impose a similar requirement for total disability benefits, they clearly could have. Second, Conn. Gen. Stat. §31-310 described the different methods of calculating wages for disability benefit purposes based on a person’s employment before their injury. That statute contained a specific method of compensation for those who had worked for less than two weeks before suffering the disabling injury, which implied that retirees could begin receiving permanent total disability benefits after their retirement.

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