PA High Court Orders Disability Repayment
According to the six-page opinion authored by Chief Justice Stephen Zappala, William Poole worked as a wholesale canvasser for Warehouse Club Inc. when he slipped and fell on ice in his employer’s parking lot and aggravated a pre-existing back problem, according to a Legal Intelligencer report.
At the time of the accident in March
1989, Poole made an average weekly wage of $155.87.
Quoting the Zappala ruling, the Intelligencer presented
this case background:
Poole was awarded workers’
compensation for temporary and total disability in the
amount of $140.28 per week. Poole was paid more than
$50,000 for partial disability and more than $20,000 for
unreimbursed medical expenses.
In May 1995, Poole filed a legal
malpractice action against his previous lawyer alleging
that the lawyer was negligent by filing suit against the
wrong parties in a third-party complaint.
The third-party suit was filed
against Kossman Development and Paul Kossman because
Poole’s counsel believed that they owned the property
where Poole fell. A judge dismissed the complaint,
finding the parties were, in fact, not the proper
defendants in the case. Poole could not refile the case
against the proper defendants because the two-year
statute of limitations had expired.
Travelers Insurance Co. requested
it get paid back out of any money Poole received as a
result of the legal malpractice action. Poole denied the
insurance company’s subrogation request because no
workers’ compensation lien existed in the legal
malpractice action.
Poole settled the case in July
1998, and his current counsel refused to provide
Warehouse and Travelers with any information about the
settlement, asserting the confidentiality clause
precludes a release of such information.
A workers’ compensation judge,
however, ruled that both Warehouse and Travelers were
entitled to money back from the legal malpractice case
award and ordered disclosure of the settlement amount.
Poole appealed.