LaVogue v. Cincinnati, Inc.
| Decision Date | 25 November 1986 |
| Docket Number | No. 5100,5100 |
| Citation | 516 A.2d 151,9 Conn.App. 91 |
| Court | Connecticut Court of Appeals |
| Parties | Richard LaVOGUE v. CINCINNATI, INC., et al. |
Richard S. Bartlett, Coventry, with whom, on the brief, was Jonathan F. Reik, Hartford, for the appellants (defendants).
Barry J. Waters, West Hartford, for the appellee (plaintiff).
Before DUPONT, C.J., and BORDEN and DALY, JJ.
The sole issue of this appeal is whether General Statutes § 31-297(b) 1 precludes the defendant employer from attacking subject matter jurisdiction of the state of Connecticut over the plaintiff employee's claim for workers' compensation benefits. The plaintiff was injured during the course of his employment and he sent a written notice of a claim for Connecticut workers' compensation benefits to the defendant at the defendant's regional office in Massachusetts and at its home office in Ohio. The defendant did not file a notice to contest liability pursuant to General Statutes § 31-297(b).
The plaintiff sustained a 100 percent loss to an eye while working in Rhode Island for the defendant, an Ohio corporation. The plaintiff lived in Connecticut at the request of the defendant, and maintained an office for the defendant in his home for which he was paid by the defendant at the time of his injury. The regional office of the defendant was located in Massachusetts and the plaintiff was frequently assigned by it to work in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New York, and occasionally in other states. The amount of compensation benefits in Connecticut is considerably greater than those available under Massachusetts law, the law pursuant to which the plaintiff has been receiving benefits. 2 The defendant does not contest compensability or liability but claims that Connecticut does not have jurisdiction and that, therefore, the plaintiff is not entitled to benefits pursuant to its workers' compensation schedule, but only to the benefits payable under the Massachusetts schedule. Its claim is that its failure to file a notice to contest pursuant to General Statutes § 31-297(b) does not prevent it from attacking the jurisdiction of the Connecticut workers' compensation commission over the plaintiff's claim.
The workers' compensation commissioner determined that the plaintiff's motion to preclude the defendant from contesting liability pursuant to General Statutes § 31-297(b) should be denied and that the claim of the plaintiff should be dismissed. The plaintiff appealed from the commissioner's decision to the compensation review division which ruled that the plaintiff's motion to preclude should have been granted. Although the review division determined that the defendant had conceded both compensability and jurisdiction when it failed to contest the plaintiff's initial claim, it also went on to conclude that the plaintiff's contacts with Connecticut were sufficient to give Connecticut...
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...to preclude under § 32-297(b). The compensation review division panel specifically based its finding of error on LaVogue v. Cincinnati, Inc., 9 Conn.App. 91, 516 A.2d 151, cert. denied, 201 Conn. 814, 518 A.2d 72 (1986). In doing so, that panel said: "LaVogue held, 'If an employer fails to ......
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...construed the conclusive presumption to bar an employer even from asserting jurisdictional defenses to a claim; LaVogue v. Cincinnati, Inc., 9 Conn.App. 91, 93, 516 A.2d 151, cert. denied, 201 Conn. 814, 518 A.2d 72 (1986); Bush v. Quality Bakers of America, 2 Conn. App. 363, 372-74, 479 A.......
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