Georgia Supreme Court rules against Cuthbert woman in death benefits claim

ATLANTA — The Georgia Supreme Court has denied a Cuthbert woman’s appeal of a superior court ruling that she is not entitled to a death benefit for her son, who was killed while working for the city of Cuthbert.

In a unanimous opinion released today, the high court upheld the Randolph County Superior Court decision against Louise Shorter Barzey, whose son, Deron Shorter, who was 37 at the time, died on July 16, 2010 when the city mower he was operating crashed into a ditch.

Shorter, who was single with no dependents, had no heirs other than his mother, according to facts from the case. But since she was not a dependent of her son, city of Cuthbert officials determined that she was not entitled to Shorter’s death benefit under the Georgia Workers’ Compensation Act.

Under the Act, a death benefit may only be paid to a legal dependent. The statute says that the cost of the burial is the only compensation for an employee who has no dependents.

Barzey argued that distinction violated her federal constitutional rights to due process and equal protection, arguments that the trial judge ruled against in an October 2013 summary judgment requested by the city.

In the Supreme Court opinion, Justice David Nahmias wrote: “We affirm the trial court’s ruling that the Act’s limitation on the recovery of non-dependent heirs does not violate Barzey’s constitutional rights to due process and equal protection.”

A statute “does not violate due process in substance as long as it ‘bear[s] a rational relationship to a legitimate objective of the government,’” the opinion stated. Similarly, to survive an equal protection challenge, “the classifications drawn in the statute [must] bear a rational relationship to a legitimate end of government not prohibited by the Constitution.”

While the Georgia Supreme Court has not previously ruled on the constitutionality of excluding non-dependent heirs from recovery under the Workers’ Compensation Act, a number of courts in other jurisdictions have. “Those courts have consistently held that the legislature may rationally decide to direct workers’ compensation resources to those who are dependent on deceased employees and limit the recovery of non-dependents, and thus the distinction between dependents and non-dependents does not violate federal or state constitutional rights to due process and equal protection,” Nahmias wrote, citing a number of cases.

“We are persuaded by the reasoning of these cases, and we accordingly hold that because the Workers’ Compensation Act’s differing treatment of dependent and non-dependent heirs is not irrational and serves the legitimate government purpose of workers’ compensation, the Act’s limitation on recovery by non-dependent heirs does not violate the due process or equal protection rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution,” the opinion stated.