Zenith Insurance v. Workers' Compensation Appeals Board

Petitioner Zenith Insurance Company (Zenith), a workers’ compensation carrier, seeks review and annulment of a Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board decision awarding full death benefits, medical benefits, and burial expenses to the widow of an employee who died of work-induced congestive heart failure. Zenith maintains that 50 percent of the contributing cause of death was a cumulative heart injury sustained by the employee during an earlier period of employment and that therefore the board should have permitted the widow to recover only 50 percent of the death and other benefits from its insured.

In Pacific Gas & Elec. Co. v. Ind. Acc. Com. (1961) 56 Cal.2d 219 [ 14 Cal.Rptr. 548 , 363 P.2d 596 ], our Supreme Court held that the Legislature made no provision for apportionment of death benefits and that absent express legislative direction, such benefits are not apportion- *179 able. Zenith contends that Labor Code section 3208.2 which was added in 1968 nullified the Pacific Gas & Elec, decision and mandates apportionment of the death and other benefits awarded in this case. 1 The section provides in pertinent part that when “death results from the combined effects of two…