Background
Frank Di Luzio worked for the City of Santa Fe as a firefighter for more than twenty years before retiring in 2001. In 2012, he was diagnosed with Stage IV mantle cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, an occupational disease linked to his firefighting service. He became permanently and continuously disabled in January 2012 and died from the disease in June 2021.
The City paid Di Luzio 492 weeks of permanent-total-disability benefits. After his death, his widow sought benefits under New Mexico’s Occupational Disease Disablement Law. The workers’ compensation judge awarded her 700 weeks of death benefits and declined to credit the disability payments already made to her husband. The City appealed.
The Court’s Holding
The New Mexico Court of Appeals held that the statute’s two-year clause did not bar the widow’s claim. The provision does not measure two years from the onset of disability; because Di Luzio remained continuously disabled until his death, his death occurred within the period of disablement. The court also declined to consider the City’s separate three-year defense because the City had not preserved it before the workers’ compensation judge.
The court agreed with the City, however, that the statute imposes a 700-week aggregate cap on combined disability and death benefits. Since Di Luzio had already received 492 weeks of disability benefits, only 208 weeks remained for his widow’s weekly death benefits. The court remanded for an amended award of $733.16 per week for 208 weeks, beginning June 2, 2021.
Key Takeaways
- Continuous disability through death satisfies the ODDL’s two-year death-benefit provision.
- An employer must timely plead and preserve statutory defenses for appellate review.
- The ODDL’s 700-week limit applies collectively to disability and dependent death benefits.
Why It Matters
The decision preserves a surviving dependent’s ability to seek death benefits when an occupational disease continuously disables a worker until death, even if death occurs years after disability began. But it also gives the ODDL’s 2015 aggregate-benefit cap full effect, reducing dependent benefits by the duration of disability benefits already paid to the worker.