Idaho State Statutes - Idaho Attorney Directory

Words and terms used in the worker's compensation
law, unless the context otherwise requires, are defined in the subsections
which follow:
(1) "Alien" means a person who is not a citizen, a national or a resident
of the United States or Canada. Any person not a citizen or national of the
United States who relinquishes or is about to relinquish his residence in the
United States shall be regarded as an alien.
(2) "Beneficiary" means any person who is entitled to income benefits or
medical and related benefits under this law.
(3) "Burial expenses" means a sum, not to exceed six thousand dollars
($6,000) for funeral and burial or cremation, together with the actual
expenses of transportation of the employee's body to his place of residence
within the United States or Canada.
(4) "Commission" means the industrial commission.
(5) "Community service worker" means:
(a) Any person who has been convicted of a criminal offense, any juvenile
who has been found to be within the purview of chapter 5, title 20, Idaho
Code, and who has been informally diverted under the provisions of section
20-511, Idaho Code, or any person or youth who has been diverted from the
criminal or juvenile justice system and who performs a public service for
any department, institution, office, college, university, authority,
division, board, bureau, commission, council, or other entity of the
state, or any city, county, school district, irrigation district or other
taxing district authorized to levy a tax or an assessment or any other
political subdivision or any private not-for-profit agency which has
elected worker's compensation insurance coverage for such person; or
(b) Parolees under department of correction supervision, probationers
under court order or department of correction supervision and offender
residents of community work centers under the direction or order of the
board of correction who are performing public service or community service
work for any of the entities specified in paragraph (5)(a) of this section
other than the department of correction.
(6) "Compensation" used collectively means any or all of the income
benefits and the medical and related benefits and medical services.
(7) "Custom farmer" means a person who contracts to supply operated
equipment to a proprietor of a farm for the purpose of performing part or all
of the activities related to raising or harvesting agricultural or
horticultural commodities.
(8) "Death" means death resulting from an injury or occupational disease.
(9) Dependency limitations.
(a) "Adopted" and "adoption" include cases where persons are treated as
adopted as well as those of legal adoption unless legal adoption is
specifically provided.
(b) "Brother" and "sister" include stepbrothers and stepsisters, half
brothers and half sisters, and brothers and sisters by adoption.
(c) "Child" includes adopted children, posthumous children, and
acknowledged illegitimate children, but does not include stepchildren
unless actually dependent.
(d) "Grandchild" includes children of legally adopted children and
children of stepchildren, but does not include stepchildren of children,
stepchildren of stepchildren, or stepchildren of adopted children unless
actually dependent.
(e) "Parent" includes stepparents and parents by adoption.
(f) "Grandparent" includes parents of parents by adoption, but does not
include parents of stepparents, stepparents of parents, or stepparents of
stepparents.
(10) "Disability," for purposes of determining total or partial temporary
disability income benefits, means a decrease in wage-earning capacity due to
injury or occupational disease, as such capacity is affected by the medical
factor of physical impairment, and by pertinent nonmedical factors as provided
in section 72-430, Idaho Code.
(11) "Employee" is synonymous with "workman" and means any person who has
entered into the employment of, or who works under contract of service or
apprenticeship with, an employer. It does not include any person engaged in
any of the excepted employments enumerated in section 72-212, Idaho Code,
unless an election as provided in section 72-213, Idaho Code, has been filed.
Any reference to an employee who has been injured shall, where the employee is
dead, include a reference to his dependents as herein defined, if the context
so requires, or, where the employee is a minor or incompetent, to his
committee or guardian or next friend.
(12) (a) "Employer" means any person who has expressly or impliedly hired
or contracted the services of another. It includes contractors and
subcontractors. It includes the owner or lessee of premises, or other
person who is virtually the proprietor or operator of the business there
carried on, but who, by reason of there being an independent contractor or
for any other reason, is not the direct employer of the workers there
employed. If the employer is secured, it means his surety so far as
applicable.
(b) "Professional employer" means a professional employer as defined in
chapter 24, title 44, Idaho Code.
(c) "Temporary employer" means the employer of temporary employees as
defined in section 44-2403(7), Idaho Code.
(d) "Work site employer" means the client of the temporary or
professional employer with whom a worker has been placed.
(13) "Farm labor contractor" means any person or his agent or
subcontractor who, for a fee, recruits and employs farm workers and performs
any farm labor contracting activity.
(14) "Gender and number." The masculine gender includes the feminine and
neuter; "husband" or "wife" includes "spouse"; the singular number includes
plural and the plural the singular.
(15) "Income benefits" means payments provided for or made under the
provisions of this law to the injured employee disabled by an injury or
occupational disease, or his dependents in case of death, excluding medical
and related benefits.
(16) "Independent contractor" means any person who renders service for a
specified recompense for a specified result, under the right to control or
actual control of his principal as to the result of his work only and not as
to the means by which such result is accomplished. For the purposes of
worker's compensation law, a custom farmer is considered to be an independent
contractor.
(17) "Injury" and "accident."
(a) "Injury" means a personal injury caused by an accident arising out of
and in the course of any employment covered by the worker's compensation
law.
(b) "Accident" means an unexpected, undesigned, and unlooked for mishap,
or untoward event, connected with the industry in which it occurs, and
which can be reasonably located as to time when and place where it
occurred, causing an injury.
(c) "Injury" and "personal injury" shall be construed to include only an
injury caused by an accident, which results in violence to the physical
structure of the body. The terms shall in no case be construed to include
an occupational disease and only such nonoccupational diseases as result
directly from an injury.
(18) "Manifestation" means the time when an employee knows that he has an
occupational disease, or whenever a qualified physician shall inform the
injured worker that he has an occupational disease.
(19) "Medical and related benefits" means payments provided for or made
for medical, hospital, burial and other services as provided in this law other
than income benefits.
(20) "Medical services" means medical, surgical, dental or other
attendance or treatment, nurse and hospital service, medicines, apparatus,
appliances, prostheses, and related services, facilities and supplies.
(21) "Occupational diseases."
(a) "Occupational disease" means a disease due to the nature of an
employment in which the hazards of such disease actually exist, are
characteristic of, and peculiar to the trade, occupation, process, or
employment, but shall not include psychological injuries, disorders or
conditions unless the conditions set forth in section 72-451, Idaho Code,
are met.
(b) "Contracted" and "incurred," when referring to an occupational
disease, shall be deemed the equivalent of the term "arising out of and in
the course of" employment.
(c) "Disablement," except in the case of silicosis, means the event of an
employee's becoming actually and totally incapacitated because of an
occupational disease from performing his work in the last occupation in
which injuriously exposed to the hazards of such disease, and "disability"
means the state of being so incapacitated.
(d) "Disablement," in the case of silicosis, means the event of first
becoming actually incapacitated, because of such disease, from performing
any work in any remunerative employment; and "disability" means the state
of being so incapacitated.
(e) "Silicosis" means the characteristic fibrotic condition of the lungs
caused by the inhalation of silicon dioxide (SiO ) dust.
(22) "Outworker" means a person to whom articles or materials are
furnished to be treated in any way on premises not under the control or
management of the person who furnished them.
(23) "Person" means the state or any political subdivision thereof, or any
individual, partnership, firm, association, trust, corporation, including the
state insurance fund, or any representative thereof.
(24) "Physician" means medical physicians and surgeons, ophthalmologists,
otorhinolaryngologists, dentists, osteopaths, osteopathic physicians and
surgeons, optometrists, podiatrists, chiropractic physicians, and members of
any other healing profession licensed or authorized by the statutes of this
state to practice such profession within the scope of their practice as
defined by the statutes of this state and as authorized by their licenses.
(25) "Secretary" means the secretary of the commission.
(26) "Self-insurer" means an employer who has been authorized under the
provisions of this law to carry his own liability to his employees covered by
this law.
(27) "State" includes any state, district, commonwealth, zone or territory
of the United States or any province of Canada.
(28) "Surety" means any insurer authorized to insure or guarantee payment
of worker's compensation liability of employers in any state; it also includes
the state insurance fund, a self-insurer and an inter-insurance exchange.
(29) "United States," when used in a geographic sense, means the several
states, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the Canal
Zone and the territories of the United States.
(30) "Wages" and "wage earning capacity" prior to the injury or
disablement from occupational disease mean the employee's money payments for
services as calculated under section 72-419, Idaho Code, and shall
additionally include the reasonable market value of board, rent, housing,
lodging, fuel, and other advantages which can be estimated in money which the
employee receives from the employer as part of his remuneration, and
gratuities received in the course of employment from others than the employer.
"Wages" shall not include sums which the employer has paid to the employee to
cover any special expenses entailed on him by the nature of his employment.
(31) "Wages" and "wage earning capacity" after the injury or disablement
from occupational disease shall be presumed to be the actual earnings after
the injury or disablement, which presumption may be overcome by showing that
those earnings do not fairly and reasonably represent wage earning capacity;
in such a case wage earning capacity shall be determined in the light of all
factors and circumstances which may affect the worker's capacity to earn
wages.
(32) "Work experience student" means any person enrolled in the public
school districts of this state and who, as part of his instruction, is
enrolled in a class or program for academic credit and for which the student
is employed by, or works for, a private or governmental entity. The student
need not receive wages from the private or governmental entity in order to be
classified as a work experience student.
(33) "Worker's compensation law" or "workmen's compensation law" means and
includes the worker's compensation law of this state and any like or similar
law of any state, United States, territory, or province of Canada.

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