Opinion ID: 1476757
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: History and Purpose

Text: Delaware's first Workers' Compensation Statute was enacted in 1917. That law was intended to provide more direct and economical compensation for injured employees and create a pool of employers that would bear the burden of ameliorating the losses resulting from industrial accidents, and to provide prompt financial and medical assistance to injured employees and their families because the lengthy and protracted nature of tort litigation arising out of injuries to an employee often delayed such assistance for an extended period of time. [9] In Rafferty v. Hartman Walsh Painting Co ., we noted that Workers' Compensation statutes similar to the Delaware Act were adopted in most states early in the last century in response to the failure of the common law to provide a quick, practical, cost effective remedy for on the job injuries suffered by workers. [10] In Delaware, as in many other states' workers' compensation statutes, the elimination of an employee's action at common law and the substitution of a complete statutory remedy for work-related injuries involves a trade-off. [11] On one side, compensation is to be paid promptly to an employee for a work-related injury without the employee being required to prove any fault by the employer. [12] The trade-off is that the workers' compensation statutes preclude the employee from bringing a common law tort action against the employer for injuries arising out of the job related accident. [13] Indeed, most courts have held that the exclusivity provision of a workers' compensation statute precludes a suit for negligence under the common law, even if the injury was caused by the gross, wanton, willful, deliberate, reckless, culpable or malicious negligence, or other misconduct of the employer. [14]