Workplace Wrongful Death in Ohio

Your loved one went to work to support the family and did not come home. Workplace deaths are sudden and often violent, and they leave families with questions the employer may not be eager to answer: what happened, why the equipment failed, and whether anyone saw it coming. We are sorry you are living through this.

Ohio handles workplace deaths differently from other wrongful death cases. The employer is usually protected by the workers' compensation system, but that is rarely the end of the story. This page explains the death benefits available, the narrow claim against an employer, and the claims against other companies that often matter most.

How workplace deaths happen

Fatal work injuries tend to follow familiar patterns:

• Falls from roofs, ladders, scaffolds, and lifts.
• Struck-by and caught-in incidents, including unguarded machinery, falling loads, and trench collapses.
• Vehicle and equipment crashes, including forklifts, delivery trucks, and highway work zones.
• Electrocution.
• Explosions, fires, and toxic exposures.

Many of these deaths involve more than one company: a general contractor and its subcontractors, a property owner, a staffing agency, an equipment manufacturer, or a driver for another business.

What the investigation must capture

• The scene and the equipment. Machines, guards, harnesses, and tools should be preserved in their post-incident condition. If a product may have failed, it must not be repaired, scrapped, or returned to service.
• OSHA and other agency investigations, including the inspection file, photographs, interviews, and any citations.
• Contracts and site documents, such as subcontracts, safety plans, daily logs, and training records, which show who controlled the work and who was responsible for safety.
• Witness accounts from coworkers, gathered before memories fade or people move on.
• Maintenance and repair records for the equipment involved, which can show whether a safety device was removed or bypassed.

Ohio rules specific to workplace deaths

Workers' compensation death benefits

When a work injury or occupational disease causes death, Ohio workers' compensation pays death benefits to dependents. R.C. 4123.59. A surviving spouse who was living with the worker, and children under 18 (or 25 if in school full time) who depended on the worker, are generally presumed to have been wholly dependent. R.C. 4123.59(D). For wholly dependent survivors, the weekly benefit is based on two-thirds of the worker's average weekly wage, subject to a statewide maximum. A spouse's benefits continue until death or remarriage; on remarriage, the spouse receives a lump sum equal to two years of benefits. R.C. 4123.59(B). The system also pays reasonable funeral expenses up to $7,500. R.C. 4123.66(A).

The death claim has its own deadline. Workers' compensation claims are forever barred unless notice is given within one year after the injury or death, including written notice of the death to the Industrial Commission or the Bureau of Workers' Compensation. R.C. 4123.84(A).

The employer is usually immune from a lawsuit

In exchange for providing workers' compensation, an employer that complies with the system is not liable in damages for an employee's work injury "or for any death resulting from such injury." R.C. 4123.74. This is often called workers' compensation exclusivity. For most families, it means the employer cannot be sued for ordinary negligence, however serious.

The employer intentional tort exception

Ohio allows a lawsuit against an employer only for an intentional tort, and R.C. 2745.01 makes that claim narrow. The family must prove that the employer acted "with the intent to injure another or with the belief that the injury was substantially certain to occur," and the statute defines "substantially certain" as acting with deliberate intent to cause injury or death. R.C. 2745.01(A) and (B). In Kaminski v. Metal & Wire Prods. Co., 2010-Ohio-1027, the Supreme Court of Ohio upheld the statute and agreed that it permits recovery only when an employer acts with specific intent to cause an injury, subject to the statute's presumption.

That presumption is important. Deliberate removal of an equipment safety guard, or deliberate misrepresentation of a toxic or hazardous substance, creates a rebuttable presumption of intent to injure when the injury or death occurs as a direct result. R.C. 2745.01(C). In Camara v. Gill Dairy, L.L.C., 2026-Ohio-3056, decided in August 2026, a farm worker was pulled into a rotating shaft that was missing its guards. A jury found for the worker, the court of appeals threw out the verdict, and the Supreme Court reversed. It held that the presumption attaches when the evidence shows the employer "made a considered decision to remove and not reattach an existing equipment safety guard," that removal can be proved with circumstantial evidence, and that courts may not add requirements the statute does not contain. Maintenance records, repair invoices, photographs, and coworker testimony about how long a guard had been missing can decide these cases.

Claims against other companies

Workers' compensation immunity protects the employer, not everyone else on the job. Families can bring full wrongful death claims against third parties whose negligence or defective products contributed to the death, such as:

• general contractors and other subcontractors on a construction site;
• property owners and companies that controlled the premises;
• manufacturers and sellers of machinery, ladders, lifts, and safety equipment (see our page on defective product deaths);
• drivers and trucking companies in work-zone or delivery crashes (see our page on truck crash deaths).

When a third party pays, the Bureau of Workers' Compensation or a self-insured employer has a statutory right to be repaid part of what it paid in benefits, divided by a formula that weighs the subrogation interest against the family's uncompensated damages, unless the parties agree to a fairer division. R.C. 4123.931(A) and (B). The Supreme Court of Ohio has upheld that statute. Planning for this repayment is part of every third-party settlement.

What insurance or funds may pay

The workers' compensation death claim is paid by the state insurance fund or, for a self-insured employer, by the employer. Third parties are typically covered by commercial general liability, commercial auto, and umbrella policies, and construction contracts often require additional insured coverage that can extend one company's policy to another. Our guide chapter on insurance coverage explains how these policies fit together.

What your family may recover

Workers' compensation pays defined benefits; it does not compensate for grief or the loss of a parent's guidance. A wrongful death claim against a third party, or a successful intentional tort claim, can recover the full range of damages: loss of support, loss of services, loss of society and companionship, mental anguish, and funeral and burial expenses. R.C. 2125.02(C) and (D). Our page on wrongful death compensation explains each category.

Deadlines

There are several clocks at once. The workers' compensation death claim requires notice within one year. R.C. 4123.84(A). The wrongful death claim must be filed within two years after the death. R.C. 2125.02(F)(1). And a claim against the manufacturer of a machine is generally cut off ten years after the machine was first delivered to an end user, with limited exceptions. R.C. 2125.02(F)(2)(a); R.C. 2305.10(C). Older equipment makes that last rule critical. Our page on Ohio wrongful death deadlines explains the details.

Common questions