On January 24, 2025, the Supreme Court of Illinois, in
Martin v. Goodrich Corp., ruled that a widow of an employee who died from liver cancer as a result of workplace exposure to carcinogenic substances, was not barred by the exclusive remedy provision of the Occupational Diseases Act from pursuing a civil wrongful death and survival lawsuit against the employer.
In this case, the widow asserted that exclusive remedy did not bar her lawsuit, based on section 1.1 of the Occupational Diseases Act, which provides that exclusive remedy does not apply to injuries or death resulting from occupational diseases where the recovery of benefits is precluded due to the operation of any period of repose. The widow argued that a period of repose existed because the employee was last exposed to the carcinogenic substances in 1974 and was not able to obtain benefits due to section 1(f) of the Act, which provides that "no compensation shall be payable for or on account of any occupational disease unless disablement ... occurs within two years after the last day of the last exposure to the hazards of the disease."
The court found that section 1(f), by its plain language, operates as a statute of repose because it bars compensation after a defined period of time regardless of whether the employee has discovered the disease. The court, in its analysis, then turned to section 1.1 of the statute and reasoned that it applies prospectively to cases where employees' claims under the Act are barred due to the discovery of an illness after its enactment in 2019. With this decision, the court rejected the employer's argument that the prospective application of section 1.1 would violate the employer's due process rights under the state constitution and concluded that the widow was not precluded from seeking compensation through a civil action.
For more information on other cases monitored by NCCI's Legal Division, visit previous Court Case Updates and
Court Case Insights under the
Legal section of
INSIGHTS on
ncci.com.
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