Conn. High Court: Smoking Lowers Workers’ Comp Benefits

Smoking kills. And in Connecticut, it also changes the apportionment of workers’ compensation benefits, the state’s top court has ruled.

Last month, Connecticut’s Supreme Court ruled in an asbestos case that centered on permanent partial disability benefits for an insulation worker who was also a lifetime smoker.

The worker, George Deschenes, was a union insulator for several companies between 1967 and 1985, during which time, he was exposed to asbestos. He has been unable to work full-time since 1994, when doctors diagnosed him with a lung disease caused by asbestos.

However, Deschenes, born in 1945, began smoking at the age of 17. By the time he was 25, Deschenes was smoking upwards of two packs a day, a habit he maintained until 1991 when he suffered a heart attack and that required coronary artery bypass surgery. Since then, he reduced his smoking, and currently is down to one cigarette after each meal. He developed emphysema as a result of his cigarette smoking.

Five years ago, a workers’ compensation commission declared that Deschenes had suffered a 25 percent permanent partial disability in each of his lungs, attributable to his asbestos exposure. At the time, physicians disagreed over the extent of the injuries that were attributable to asbestos versus smoking.

The commissioner in the case ultimately decided that the asbestos was a substantial factor in Deschenes’ injuries and awarded the disability claim – a decision his former employers appealed.

In the high court’s opinion, Justice Flemming L. Norcott Jr. wrote, “apportionment or reduction of permanent partial disability benefits is appropriate only in those cases wherein different diseases, one of which is occupational in nature, have combined to cause, in effect, two different disabilities, even if they ultimately affect the same bodily part or function.”

The court remanded the state’s workers’ compensation board to determine the appropriate reduction in Deschenes’ benefits.