Opinion ID: 2350712
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The statutory requirements for occupational disability benefits

Text: Alaska Statute 39.35.410(a) provides: An employee is eligible for an occupational disability benefit if employment is terminated because of a total and apparently permanent occupational disability. . . . Alaska Statute 39.35.680(27) defines the term occupational disability as: [A] physical or mental condition that, in the judgment of the administrator, presumably permanently prevents an employee from satisfactorily performing the employee's usual duties for an employer or the duties of another comparable position or job that an employer makes available and for which the employee is qualified by training or education; however, the proximate cause of the condition must be a bodily injury sustained, or a hazard undergone, while in the performance and within the scope of the employee's duties and not the proximate result of the wilful negligence of the employee. Occupational disability benefits. . . serve a distinct function and are not intended to replicate the protection given by the workers' compensation system. [14] Therefore, unlike the presumption of compensability in workers' compensation cases, an employee claiming occupational disability benefits bears the burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that the disability was proximately caused by an injury which occurred in the course of employment. [15] If one or more possible causes of a disability are occupational, benefits will be awarded where the record establishes that the occupational injury is a substantial factor in the employee's disability regardless of whether a nonoccupational injury could independently have caused disability. [16] The underlying injury need not be caused by the employment to receive occupational disability benefits. We have explained that [i]t is basic that an accident which produces injury by precipitating the development of a latent condition or by aggravating a preexisting condition is a cause of that injury. [17] This is because  increased pain or other symptoms can be as disabling as deterioration of the underlying disease itself. [18]