High Court Splits 4-3 on Worker's Abandonment of Workforce

A divided Ohio Supreme Court ruled that a worker who was forced to retire because his work-related lung disease was exacerbated by his smoking habit was not eligible for permanent total disability benefits because he had voluntarily abandoned the workforce for a reason unrelated to his industrial injury."Because the Industrial Commission had conclusively established in March 2005 that the exacerbation of Grashel's symptoms that forced him to stop working in 2004 was caused by smoking, not by the allowed conditions in his claim, the commission abused its discretion when it determined that G...