Oklahoma Multiple Injury Fund Fund

If an injured worker needs financial help from the state, it obviously must be properly funded somehow. While this may seem completely obvious, that hasn’t always been the case when it related to Oklahoma’s Multiple Injury Trust Fund. As you’ll see below, the issues surrounding this fund have been both numerous and serious in nature, and over the years there have been many injured former workers who had to go without payments while the political games continued in the legislature.

Formation of the Multiple Injury Trust Fund

The fund was originally created in 1943 as part of the Special Indemnity Fund Act. The basic intent behind the original act was to protect employers from being forced to compensate employees who were injured on the job but who also had been previously injured while working somewhere else.
Basically, the law that was enacted stated that the employer or the employer’s insurance carrier would be responsible only for the portion of the benefits payable to the injured worker commensurate with what those benefits would have been had there been no prior injury that contributed to the ultimate classification of permanently totally disabled. After those payments had ceased, the Special Indemnity Fund was to pay the remaining portion of the benefits.

Modern History Relating to the Trust Fund

Over time, the Special Indemnity Fund came to be known as the Multiple Injury Trust Fund, and that’s because over time, it was funded with money from several sources, including:

• Tax revenues
• Insurance taxes
• Employer contributions

The funds were collected by the Oklahoma taxing authority and were overseen by the state’s legislature. Since the money collected was kept in a lump sum, a trust was formed for the benefit of those who needed the proceeds from the trust to survive everyday life. Therefore, the new name basically came from how the fund was transformed into a trust that was intended to help workers who had been injured several times and were no longer able to work. For many years, the trust performed capably.

Trouble Arises

At the beginning of the 21st Century, the media in Oklahoma began to cover a burgeoning issue – there were whispers that the fund was running low on cash and that injured workers and beneficiaries were waiting longer and longer for their payments. Some payments never arrived, and since this was for most of them their only source of income, they were left in a desperate state without the basic means to survive.
Additional investigation did in fact reveal that the fund was insolvent, which set off a state-wide political firestorm that lasted for several years. Unfortunately for those who needed these benefits, no help arrived while the battle raged. It wasn’t until 2005 that solutions began to appear.
Resolution

Ultimately, the state legislature agreed to and passed an enormous reform bill that re-funded the trust and put new policies, procedures and oversight protocols in place that were intended to keep the fund solvent and to avoid any additional issues like these to ever arise again. Basically, the reforms were as follows:

• Oklahoma Statute 85 O.S. § 172 re-institutes the Multiple Injury Trust Fund.
• Combination claims are now to be filed against the Multiple Injury Trust Fund rather than the last employer.
• The Multiple Injury Trust Fund will be funded in a manner similar to how it was funded in the past.
• The fund would be administered by CompSource Oklahoma, formerly the State Insurance Fund.
• Employees found to be permanently totally disabled under the new law as a result of a combination of disability as defined by the statute and case law may now draw weekly benefits from the Multiple Injury Trust Fund to age 65, or 15 years, whichever is longer.

Since 2005, there have been few if any problems with the administration of the Multiple Injury Trust Fund.

An Oklahoma Workers Compensation Attorney Can Help

Clearly, when there was no money available to be paid out in the form of weekly benefits, attorneys would have been of little help. However, now that the political in-fighting is over, there are situations where a permanently disabled worker will need the help of an Oklahoma workers’ compensation attorney.
For instance, there are many situations in which an injured worker’s initial claim is denied by those charged with running the fund. If this happens, the injured worker must go through an administrative appeals process in an attempt to have the decision overturned and the receipt of benefits approved.