NC Supreme Court Offers Final Ruling on Disability Standard in Extended Benefits Cases
By Matt Marriott, Group Chair, Skidmore Law Group
On December 13, 2024, the North Carolina Supreme Court offered a much anticipated ruling on extended temporary total disability benefits in Sturdivant v. North Carolina Department of Public Safety, 2024 N.C. LEXIS 977. In the newest Sturdivant decision, the Supreme Court was wrestling with what a plaintiff would need to prove in order to show disability beyond 500 weeks.
By way of brief background, in 2011, the North Carolina legislature passed a law titled “Putting North Carolina Back to Work” S.L. 2011-287, § 10, 2011, N.C. Sess. Laws 1087, 1094. Within that legislation, the legislature amended N.C. Gen. Stat. § 97-29 and put in place a 500 week cap on temporary total disability benefits for a plaintiff, unless the plaintiff introduced evidence showing “total loss of wage earning capacity,” which would entitle the plaintiff to additional TTD beyond the 500 week cap.
With the amendment to 97-29 came questions from both sides of the bar on what a plaintiff would need to show to establish “total loss of wage earning capacity.”
In simplified terms, the plaintiffs’ bar argued the definition of “total loss of wage earning capacity” was no different from the regular standard of “disability” a plaintiff would need to meet in order to show entitlement to TTD before the 500 week cap. The defense bar, on the other hand, argued that because the legislature took the step of putting in place a 500 week cap, within broader legislation called “Putting North Carolina Back to Work,” and used a new legal term of art, “total loss of wage earning capacity,” to set the standard, the legislature pretty clearly intended to create a higher burden for a plaintiff to meet to show entitlement to TTD beyond 500 weeks.
Naturally, with the differing views on how to define “total loss of wage earning capacity,” a great deal of litigation followed attempting to resolve the issue. In 2023, the North Carolina Court of Appeals, in Sturdivant v. NC Dept. of Public Safety, 288 N.C. App. 470 (2023), concluded the term “total loss of wage earning capacity” had no different meaning than the term “disability” for cases where a plaintiff was trying to prove entitlement to TTD before 500 weeks. As such, they concluded that a plaintiff did not need to introduce anything more than what he/she would need to introduce if trying to prove entitlement to TTD before the 500 week cap.
In response to the Court of Appeals’ 2023 Sturdivant ruling, the General Assembly passed Current Operations Associations Act of 2023, S.L. 2023-134, §31.3, which clarified for all cases moving forward that the standard of disability before 500 weeks and after 500 weeks is not the same. On the contrary, the legislature made clear that a plaintiff would need to show “the complete elimination of the capacity to earn wages” for the plaintiff to prove entitlement to TTD beyond 500 weeks.
While the Current Operations Associations Act of 2023 would certainly apply to all future cases involving “extended benefits,” the NC Supreme Court granted discretionary review of the Court of Appeals’ Sturdivant decision, because the Supreme Court believed the Court of Appeals had reached an incorrect legal conclusion.
In the December 13, 2024 Supreme Court Sturdivant ruling, the Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals Sturdivant decision and clarified that the Court of Appeals had committed legal error when it concluded the standard of disability before and after 500 weeks was the same.
The Supreme Court’s Sturdivant ruling makes clear that for all extended benefits cases, both before and after the Current Operations Associations Act of 2023, the plaintiff would need to meet a higher standard than the normal disability standard to show entitlement to TTD beyond 500 weeks. The Supreme Court confirmed “total loss of wage earning capacity” did not mean the same thing as “disability,” and instead means that a plaintiff has the “total loss of the employee’s personal capacity to earn wages in any type of employment.”
While future cases will eventually arise that address what evidence is sufficient to show “total loss of the employee’s personal capacity to earn wages in any type of employment,” the major take-away from this new Supreme Court Sturdivant decision is that the standard of disability after 500 weeks is not the same as before 500 weeks. The standard for proving disability after 500 weeks is a higher standard than the disability standard before 500 weeks.