2016 Oklahoma Statutes
Title 85A. Administrative Workers' Compensation System
§85A-32. Permanent total disability awards.

A. For actions in which the subsequent injury occurred on or after November 1, 2005, if such combined disabilities constitute permanent total disability, as defined in Section 2 of this act, the employee shall receive full compensation as provided by law for the disability resulting directly and specifically from the subsequent injury. In addition, the employee shall receive compensation for permanent total disability if the combination of injuries renders the employee permanently and totally disabled. The employer shall be liable only for the degree of percent of disability which would have resulted from the subsequent injury if there had been no preexisting impairment. The compensation rate for permanent total disability awards from the Multiple Injury Trust Fund shall be the compensation rate for permanent partial disability paid by the employer in the last combinable compensable injury.

B. Permanent total disability awards from the Multiple Injury Trust Fund shall be payable in periodic installments for a period of fifteen (15) years or until the employee reaches sixty-five (65) years of age, whichever period is longer.

C. Permanent total disability awards from the Multiple Injury Trust Fund shall accrue from the file date of the order of the Workers’ Compensation Commission finding the claimant to be permanently and totally disabled.

D. Awards under this section shall abate upon the death, from any cause, of the employee.

E. Reopening any prior claim other than the last claim against the employer shall not give a claimant the right to additional Multiple Injury Trust Fund benefits.

F. The Multiple Injury Trust Fund shall have authority to compromise a claim for less than the indicated amount of permanent total disability. An order entered after the effective date of this act may be paid in periodic installments beginning on the date of the award, or may be commuted to a lump-sum payment or payments, by agreement of the claimant and the Multiple Injury Trust Fund.

G. An attorney for a claimant against the Multiple Injury Trust Fund shall be entitled to a fee equal to twenty percent (20%) of permanent disability benefits awarded. For awards entered after the effective date of this act, the attorney fee shall be paid in periodic installments by the attorney receiving every fifth check. All benefits awarded to the attorney shall be vested.

H. In the event a claimant receiving benefits for permanent and total disability from the Multiple Injury Trust Fund dies as a result of his or her injury before the award has been fully paid, payments shall continue to the surviving spouse for five (5) years or upon remarriage, whichever occurs first. In no event shall payments to the surviving spouse extend beyond the period of benefits awarded to the claimant.

Added by Laws 2013, c. 208, § 32, eff. Feb. 1, 2014.