The body of law that makes up the workers' compensation system is made up of each state's own Workers' Compensation Act as well as various federal acts including the Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act LHWCA, the Federal Employee Compensation Act FECA, and the Black Lung Benefits Act BLBA. When an injured employee can conceivably recover benefits under both a state and federal statute, conflicts of law issues can arise. To avoid conflicts, some statutes specifically identify themselves as the sole avenue for recovery. As far as the conflict between state and federal statutes, the employee's status is a major, if not the primary, factor in settling conflicts.
Applicability of the LHWCA requires that the situs and status tests be met, i.e. the injury must have occurred on United States navigable waters or adjoining area by a maritime worker as specified in the LHWCA. It appears that the LHWCA was conceived to fill a gap in workers' compensation coverage by providing benefits to those employees who were not injured on land, which would then be covered under the applicable state's Workers' Compensation Act. However, the expansion of the interpretation as to what is the "adjoining area" of navigable waters has allowed for conflicts of law questions to arise for maritime workers. Caselaw suggests that when the LHWCA does not clearly apply under the status and situs tests, each case will be examined on its own facts to determine the source of the injured employee's benefits. Notably, Louisiana denies state workers' compensation benefits to an employee who is covered by the LHWCA.
The FECA is the exclusive workers' compensation remedy for federal civilian employees. Thus, though the situs of a federal employee's injury occurs in a given state, the FECA will trump the state's workers' compensation statute and control the employee's benefits recovery. Similarly, the BLBA has identified its intent to govern over state law, though in a more limited role. The BLBA's stated purpose is to provide benefits for coal miners and their dependents where the miner is totally disabled from pneumoconiosis that was contracted due to the miner's employment in a United States coal mine. The BLBA notes that only a few states provide workers' compensation benefits for this disease and that the BLBA seeks to provide benefits in cooperation with the states. The clear language of the BLBA indicates that the federal BLBA will govern in those states that do not provide adequate coverage for pneumoconiosis, and the BLBA will give way to the state statutes that do. Copyright 2010 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. |