Iowa Workers' Compensation

The Court of Appeals, in a case that is likely to be heard by the Supreme Court, has held that the Commissioner's Declaratory Order indicating that section 85.27 required the release of surveillance materials once surveillance had been conducted was appropriate.   Iowa Insurance Institute et al. v. Core Group of the Iowa Association for Justice , No. 13-1627 (Oct. 29, 2014).  The court, in a 2-1 decision, found that section 85.27 of the Code, in its requirement that the release of all information was required in a workers' compensation case, encompassed the disclosure of surveillance materials. The declaratory order proceeding had been brought by the Core Group of the Iowa Association for Justice (Core Group) before the commissioner to obtain an order elucidating the commissioner's position on this issue.  The Iowa Insurance Institute and other employer and defense counsel groups intervened in the proceedings at the commissioner level.  An initial question in the c...

In April of 2012, the Workers' Compensation Core Group of the Iowa Association for Justice had requested a declaratory order from the Iowa Workers' Compensation Commissioner on the issue of the disclosure of surveillance materials.  The gist of the Core Group's request was that section 85.27 of the Iowa Code indicates that employers and claimants in workers' compensation actions agree, as a predicate for making or defending a claim for benefits, "to the release of all information to which the employee, employer, or carrier has access concerning the employee's physical or mental condition relative tot he claim and further waives any privilege for the release of the information."  The Core Group argued that previous agency policy, which had prohibited the disclosure of surveillance material until after the claimant's deposition, was rooted in the Iowa Rules of Civil Procedure rather than the workers' compensation statute, and that the broad waiver of...