The Workers Compensation Best Test For Multi-Jurisdictions

I have posted on this subject in the past. I thought it would be good to revisit the subject after I read about a Tennessee employer that tried to have North Carolina apply Tennessee subrogation laws.

The WALSH Test is still the tried-and-true way to decide on which jurisdiction’s laws would apply in the case of – for example – a truck driver who was injured in Arizona whose home was in Iowa.

I have seen the WALSH Test applied to a case by a Workers Compensation judge many years ago. One of the carriers that trained me was where I became familiar with the test.

OK, so let us look at the truck driver. The implied caveat is that I know each state has its own laws on multi-jurisdictions. OK, so here is the test –

Worked – what state did the employee work the most in overall?

Accident – place of accident?

Lived - where is their home?

Salaried – where is the employee paid from each time?

Hired – where was the contract of hire initiated?

Transportation workers such as long-haul truck drivers are usually the toughest cases to make a determination. Using the trucker example:

Worked – multi-state (not a determining factor)

Accident – Arizona

Lived – Iowa

Salaried – Paid out of Texas

Hired - Oklahoma

Where is the jurisdiction in this Workers Compensation matter? The answer is Arizona. The WALSH Test ranks the importance of each element starting with the W. If each one of the tests result in a different state "Worked" would be the most important. Accident is the next most important, so the jurisdiction would be Arizona.

The test is not absolute. Employees have been able to win jurisdictional cases in states that have no involvement in the Workers Comp file. The WALSH test is a good bellwether.

From The Workers Comp Costs Savings Blog http://blogs.cutcompcosts.com Written by James J Moore, AIC, MBA, ChFC