Opinion ID: 1426853
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: An Adjudicated Employer's Liability In Workers' Compensation Is Always An Indivisible Integrity, Though It Might Be Judicially Allocable Severally To Successive Carriers For The Same Employer Who Are Found To Be Responsible For Different Time Stages of The Same Accidental Injury

Text: ¶ 14 For every industrial accident the law recognizes but one claim  the worker's claim against her employer. [12] The liability adjudged in a compensation case is an indivisible integrity owed by the employer to the claimant. Whenever two or more carriers may be implicated, the WCC must first decide the employer's liability for the claim and then, if necessary, allocate it among the responsible risk carriers. Responsibility for compensable harm from the same injury may be allocable to successive insurers, if it is limited by the period of coverage during which the harm is found to have developed. [13] Successive risk carriers for the same injury, to whom liability is to be allocated, must be joined in the single claim. Though apportionable, their pro tanto liability is co-extensive with that of the employer. [14] Compensation responsibility of successive risk carriers for the same employer is several, rather than joint or collective. For satisfaction of the entire liability, claimant looks primarily to the employer. [15]