Name
Bosse v. Sargent Co.
Insurance Company
Cross Insurance
Date Decided
August 14, 2025
Panel Members
Categories
Average Weekly WageTags
File Size
472 KB
DownloadSummary from the Troubh Heisler Attorneys
Bosse v. Sargent Co.- 2025 ME 74- Law upholds judgment of the Appellate Division, which had affirmed ALJ’s application of 39-A M.R.S.A. sec. 102(4)(B) in determining the employee’s pre-injury average weekly wage (aww). Sargent argued the facts supported use of paragraph D, as method B unfairly overstated the employee’s earning capacity. The Court confirmed that initially an ALJ must consider application of the methods of calculation in the order the appear in the statute, A-D. This case presented the issue of where an employee worked less than 200 days in the year prior to the injury but greater than 26 weeks during that year.
The Court held that when a worker has not worked at least 200 days in the year prior to the injury but has worked over 26 weeks in that year, paragraph B of section 101(4) generally applies to compute the aww. If the application of paragraph B results “in a large difference between the worker’s aww and the actual past wages, and the employer argues that given this difference the application of paragraph B is unreasonable and unfair and the ALJ should instead calculate the worker’s aww pursuant to paragraph D, then the ALJ should evaluate the reasons for the difference in order to further the overarching goal of identifying the injured realistic future earning capacity”. The factors include but are not limited to whether the worker’s history of not working full-time was voluntary, whether not working all months of the year was characteristic of the employment, and whether working full-time in the future was a realistic possibility.