What happened: Oklahoma’s Supreme Court ruled Section 43 of the workers’ comp act is constitutional, allowing carriers to recover death benefits from tort settlements.
Who’s involved: Sentinel Insurance, Rent-A-Center, and a deceased employee’s surviving family.
What’s at stake: Whether workers’ comp insurers can claim a share of wrongful death settlements as reimbursement for death benefits paid.
Why it matters: Workers’ comp carriers and subrogation professionals in Oklahoma now have definitive state-court authority backing death-benefit recovery from third-party settlements.
Where it stands: Decided October 19, 2026; remanded to trial court. Opinion not yet released for publication.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court has ruled workers’ comp carriers can claim a share of wrongful death settlements to recover death benefits already paid.
The decision, handed down October 19, confirms the constitutionality of Section 43 of the Administrative Workers’ Compensation Act - resolving a question that had gone without definitive state-court authority since the legislature expanded subrogation rights over a decade ago.
The case began with a head-on crash on the Roosevelt Bridge on March 17, 2018. A Rent-A-Center employee was killed when a westbound driver crossed the center line. Sentinel Insurance, Rent-A-Center’s workers’ comp carrier, paid statutory death benefits to the employee’s surviving spouse and minor child.
The family sued the at-fault driver in Bryan County District Court. Sentinel and Rent-A-Center intervened, seeking a portion of any recovery under Section 43(A), which entitles an employer or carrier to a first lien on two-thirds of net proceeds after collection costs.
The family argued the statute violated Article 23, Section 7 of the Oklahoma Constitution: “the right of action to recover damages for injuries resulting in death shall never be abrogated.” The trial court agreed. The Court of Civil Appeals reversed. The Supreme Court then took the case to provide precedential guidance, vacating both lower rulings and remanding.
Writing for the court, Justice Gurich traced the history. Oklahoma’s original workers’ comp system, created in 1915, did not cover deaths at all. A 1950 constitutional amendment opened the door to death benefits, but from 1951 the legislature expressly barred subrogation to recover them. That ban held for six decades.
The tide turned in stages. A limited right to recoup medical expenses appeared in 1986. An employer cause of action for death benefits followed in 2005 - though the court read it narrowly in 2010. Then the 2011 Workers’ Compensation Code and its 2014 successor, the AWCA, expanded the right significantly.
“The historical exclusion of the rights of indemnity and subrogation in death benefit claims did not offend the Oklahoma Constitution, nor do their inclusion today,” the court wrote.
Seven justices fully joined the opinion. One concurred in the result only. One did not participate.
The ruling gives workers’ comp carriers and subrogation professionals clear authority that Section 43’s two-thirds lien applies in death-benefit cases - not just injury cases.
The underlying wrongful death action has not been adjudicated on the merits and has been remanded for further proceedings.
