A federal appeals court just redrew the boundary line on workplace fatality liability, and it’s sharper than many insurers expected.
The Fifth Circuit reversed a $575,000 award tied to a welder’s fatal overdose, holding that illegal drug ingestion after treatment ends can break causation entirely.
For insurers writing marine, construction, and LHWCA exposures, this one lands like a bright, blinking signal.
The case involves Bosit Bommarito, a welder injured while helping build a Mississippi River launch site. A crane hook missing a required safety latch hit him, sending him nine to 12 feet down.
He walked away with a concussion, a fractured eye socket, and a displaced cervical disk. Surgery followed. Recovery dragged. Pain persisted.
When his opioid prescriptions ran out, Bommarito tried to manage the pain on his own. His mother, a retired nurse, pushed for an earlier doctor’s appointment but couldn’t secure one.
The next day, he died from a combination of street fentanyl and Xylazine. Toxicology showed more than six times the lethal fentanyl dose. No evidence suggested a prior history of illegal drug use. That detail mattered, but not enough to save the claim.
His estate sued Belle Chasse Marine Transportation, Belle Chasse Land Transportation, and Talisman Casualty Insurance, arguing that the fatal overdose traced back to the original workplace injury.
A district court agreed and awarded $575,668.09 under the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act.
Then the Fifth Circuit stepped in. On Nov. 13, the appellate court reversed the award, saying Bommarito’s illegal drug use constituted a superseding cause. In other words, the overdose wasn’t a foreseeable consequence of the crane accident.
Pain may have lingered, but the voluntary ingestion of street fentanyl broke the causal chain. Liability ended with the workplace injury, not with the later decision to use an illegal substance after medical care had finished.
The panel noted that Belle Chasse Marine wasn’t responsible for death caused by independent, unlawful acts occurring well after the accident.
Bommarito’s fatal overdose, the court said, stemmed from the drugs in his system — not from the defective crane hook that injured him on the job. The matter now goes back to the lower court for proceedings consistent with this opinion. The ruling isn’t final yet, but the direction is clear.
For insurance professionals, the decision sets a boundary worth writing into strategy decks. It underscores that liability doesn’t stretch indefinitely through a claimant’s post injury life, especially when an unrelated, illegal, voluntary act intervenes. Pain management issues, and addiction risk, the Fifth Circuit just put a firm limit on how far causation can run.
According to our analysts, carriers should expect litigants to test this line again, but for now, the court has handed insurers a rare moment of clarity.
