Opinion ID: 1838305
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Wage-Loss Benefit Coordination

Text: In Garrett, supra, this court reviewed the history and purpose of wage-loss benefit coordination laws. We observed that the dual purpose of benefit coordination laws, in an overall system of employer-based wage-loss protection that may provide several types of wage-loss benefits, is to assure that the employee or his or her dependents receive some degree of recovery of lost support, while precluding the employee from contemporaneously recovering duplicative benefits under different parts of the overall system that frequently exceeded the actual wages earned prior to the disability. Garrett, 95-0017 at 2, 660 So.2d at 843. We further noted that La. Rev.Stat. 23:1225 C(1) provides Louisiana employers with a reduction in their workers' compensation obligation for benefits provided by different employer-based sources. Id., 95-0017 at 8, 660 So.2d at 845. La.Rev.Stat. 23:1225 clearly is a wage-loss benefit coordination statute, and the initial enactment (now Section 1225 A) was enacted specifically to allow coordination between Louisiana workers' compensation benefits and federal Social Security disability benefits, although the Legislature for some reason chose to make Section 1225 A applicable only in cases of permanent total disability. [4] The critical holding of Garrett was that the subsequently-enacted Section 1225 C contemplated inclusion of Social Security disability benefits in the term benefits under disability benefit plans in Section 1225 C(1)(c), so that Social Security disability benefits are coordinated with workers' compensation benefits in cases other than permanent total disability.