Opinion ID: 2616242
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the nature of fund's liability

Text: Special Indemnity Fund statutes [3] govern claims by physically impaired persons. The existence of materially increased disability that results from a combination of the last injury with prior impairments constitutes the essence of the Fund's liability. [4] Awards against the Fund may be entered only for an obligation defined and authorized by statute. [5] The parameters of the Fund's liability are found in 85 O.S. 1981 § 172 A. [6] Before an award may be made it must be shown that [1] the claimant is a physically impaired person within the meaning of statutory law; [2] the claimant suffered a subsequent injury, compensable under the Workers' Compensation Act, [7] which resulted in further permanent impairment or disability; [3] the pre-existing impairments may be combined with those from the last compensable accident and [4] the disability resulting from the combination of the worker's new injury with prior impairments is materially greater than that which would have resulted from the last injury standing alone. [8] If these conditions are found to coexist, the worker is entitled to receive benefits from the last employer for impairment or disability produced directly and specifically by the last injury as well as compensation from the Fund for the amount of material increase occasioned by the combination of the last injury with pre-existing impairments. [9] An award against the Fund is limited to compensation for the material increase if any were found. The increase is represented by the extent of disability remaining after the percentage of disability that rendered the claimant a physically impaired person and the percentage attributable to the last injury alone are deducted from the aggregate or combined permanent disability. [10] The Fund's liability is purely derivative in the sense that its incidence is derived or deduced from the previously adjudicated obligation of the employer, then to be supplemented only to the extent the material increase be found. [11] Thus, there can be no reopening claim against the Fund without a successful antecedent reopening against the employer. This is so because the Fund is not liable unless the post-award deterioration process affecting the last compensable injury has in fact spawned a higher material increase than that previously adjudged. All this, of course, presupposes a postaward progression of disability produced by the last injury. Without such antecedent adjudicated change, there can be no reopening against the Fund. Mere deterioration in a worker's pre-existing conditions, which rendered him a physically impaired person (conditions in existence before the last compensable injury), without a change for the worse in his compensable disability, cannot give rise to a claim against the Fund. [12]