The Pennsylvania Superior Court has rejected an argument by defendants in a personal injury case that they were prejudiced by evidence of the plaintiff’s workers’ compensation settlement because it led the jury to make assumptions about the defendants’ liability.

In Nazarak v. Waite, a three-judge appellate panel unanimously affirmed a Centre County jury’s award of $750,000 to plaintiff Seth Nazarak, who was injured when he was rear-ended in his work truck by defendant Rubin Waite Jr., who was also driving a work truck for his employer, defendant Haranin Construction.

The defendants argued that they were entitled to a new trial because the jury was improperly told about Nazarak’s workers’ compensation lien in violation of the collateral source rule.

The knowledge that Nazarak had reached a workers’ compensation settlement with his employer’s insurer, Liberty Mutual, confused and misled the jury into concluding that his injuries ”‘must have been caused by the at-issue accident,’” the defendants said, according to Judge Correale Stevens’ Aug. 2 opinion.

But Stevens, joined by Judges Anne Lazarus and Mary Murray, said the defense’s argument misapprehended the purpose of the collateral source rule, which is to prevent juries from lowering damages awards after factoring in payments a plaintiff received from other sources, such as insurance.

“In the present case, it was Nazarak, the plaintiff below, who wanted the jury to know that he had received the workers’ compensation benefits,” Stevens said. ”Thus, the purpose underlying the collateral source rule—protection of the plaintiff and prevention of a benefit to the alleged wrongdoer—simply was not implicated.”

Stevens also waved off the defense’s argument that allowing Nazarak to collect workers’ compensation benefits and the jury’s damages award constituted a double recovery.

Stevens said it was never in dispute that Nazarak would have to repay the workers’ compensation lien from the damages award so there was no risk of double recovery and “the jury was free to determine what impact, if any, the payment of such benefits had on its finding of factual causation and damages.”

The appeals panel did agree with the defense, however, that allowing Nazarak’s workers’ compensation settlement into evidence arguably violated 42 Pa.C.S.A. Section 6141.

“However, to the extent the trial court erred in permitting Nazarak to enter into evidence the fact he settled his workers’ compensation claim, we agree with the trial court that the error does not constitute reversible error,” Stevens said.

The defendants had argued to the trial judge that allowing the settlement into evidence usurped the jury’s role as factfinder and that the jury had simply adopted Liberty Mutual’s damages figures as its own.

“The jury, as factfinder, is entitled to give as much or as little weight, if any at all, to any piece of evidence that it so desires, and was instructed as such at trial,” the trial court said. ”There is simply no factual or legal basis to support the conclusion that the jury copied Liberty Mutual’s damage calculations into the verdict.”

Counsel for Nazarak, William Coppol of Ostroff Injury Law in Blue Bell, could not be reached for comment on the decision.

Counsel for Waite and Haranin, Pamela Van Cara Collis of Walsh, Barnes, Collis & Zumpella in Pittsburgh, also could not be reached.

(Copies of the 33-page opinion in Nazarak v. Waite, PICS No. 19-0979, are available at http://at.law.com/PICS.)