How Do You Define Disability If I Am Hurt At Work in Mississippi?

    In a Mississippi Worker’s Compensation Accident, how is disability defined?

by Jay Foster, Mississippi Workers Compensation Attorney


    Our Supreme Court and State Legislature has defined disability as  “incapacity because of injury to earn the wages which the employee was receiving at the time of the injury in the same or other employment.”  Ga. Pac. Corp. v. Taplin, 586 So. 2d 823, 828 (Miss. 1991) (quoting V. Dunn, Mississippi Workmen's Compensation, § 72 (3d ed. 1982)).  “A conclusion that the employee is disabled rests on a finding that the claimant could not obtain work in similar or other jobs and that the claimant's unemployability was due to the injury in question.”  Id. (citing Dunn, § 72.1).  “If the claimant successfully establishes a disability and the injury suffered is not specifically scheduled by the Workers’ Compensation statute, the claimant’s disability is measured by loss of wage-earning capacity.”  Id. (citing Miss. Code Ann. § 71-3-17(25) (1972)); Dunn, § 86; Robinson v. Packard Elec. Div. Gen. Motors Corp., 523 So. 2d 329, 331 (Miss. 1988)).

    “Mississippi Code Annotated section . . . 71-3-3(i), provides that the party claiming disability benefits bears the burden of making a prima facie showing that he has sought and been unable to find work ‘in the same or other employment.’” Whirlpool Corp. v. Wilson, 952 So. 2d 267, 272 (Miss. Ct. App. 2006) (citing Hale v. Ruleville Health Care Ctr., 687 So. 2d 1221, 1226 (Miss. 1997)).  “Once a prima facie case for total disability has been established, the employer bears the burden of proving that the claimant has suffered only a partial disability or no loss of wage-earning capacity.”  Id.  The employer may meet this burden by producing “evidence showing that ‘the claimant's efforts to obtain other employment was a mere sham, or less than reasonable, or without proper diligence.’”  Id. (quoting Hale, 687 So. 2d at 1227).

    In other words, if you are injured at work in Mississippi and unable to return to work doing the same job or a similar job, you may be disabled from working.  This does not necessarily mean you are medically disabled but it means you may be vocationally disabled for various reasons.  Of course, if you are injured on the job, you still have to make legitimate attempts to find work.