State v. Workers' Compensation Appeals Board

In these three consolidated cases the petitioner, State of California, Department of Industrial Relations (hereafter State), challenges the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board (hereafter WCAB) determination that parents of deceased workers are dependents entitled to death benefits. The decedents, stewardesses employed by Pan American World Airways, were killed in a 1974 airplane crash in Indonesia. The three women left no spouses and no children. The parents of each claim partial dependency.

The statutes governing death benefits are found in Labor Code sections 4700-4709. Labor Code section 4701 provides that when an industrial injury causes death “either with or without disability, the employer shall be liable, in addition to any other benefits provided by this division, for:... (b) A death benefit, to be allowed to the dependents when the employee leaves any person dependent upon him for support.”

At the time of the deaths, Labor Code section 4702 provided for a death benefit “in cases of total dependency” of $40,000 except in the *676 case of a surviving widow and one or more dependent minor children, in which case the death benefit shall be $45,000. That section…