High Court Splits on Amount of Benefits Due to Comatose Worker

A narrowly divided Ohio Supreme Court has upheld the denial of scheduled-loss benefits to the estate of a quadriplegic worker for 14 of the 16 years he survived in a near-vegetative state after an industrial accident.Even though Dean Sziraki undisputedly lost the use of his arms and legs after a 1991 car accident, a four-justice majority of the high court on Wednesday concluded that his estate could only get 104 weeks of benefits because no application for benefits based on the loss of use of his extremities was filed during his lifetime. The three dissenting justices countered that the s...