Adopting a recent Superior Court ruling that denied an automatic right to a civil suit when a workers’ compensation claim was time barred, a different panel of the court affirmed the dismissal of two cases brought against Alcoa by employees who developed mesothelioma years after leaving the company.
In Sedlacek v. A.O. Smith Corp. and Crooks v. A.O. Smith Corp., a three-judge panel adopted the court’s September 2009 opinion, in Ranalli v. Rohm & Haas Co. in which the court ruled exclusivity provisions of the Workers’ Compensation Act bar recovery for a work-related disease that manifests more than 300 weeks after the employee leaves the company. A bar to recovery under the act, however, doesn’t imply an automatic right to civil suit because the act grants certain benefits that wouldn’t be available to the employee otherwise and, as a trade-off, denies others, the Ranalli court said.
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