Request By:
Mr. Otis "Buddy" Cox
Bell County Sheriff
Box 311
Pineville, Kentucky 40977
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Thomas R. Emerson, Assistant Attorney General
This is in reply to your letter stating that a "fee" deputy sheriff of Bell County, while making an arrest, was shot in the arm by a state police officer. The wound has resulted in the accumulation of several thousand dollars worth of medical and hospital expenses and additional sums will, in all probability, be incurred. The deputy sheriff has no insurance to cover the costs of hospitalization and treatment and, since the wound was sustained in the performance of duty, you and the fiscal court think the county, if it is legally permissible, should pay the hospital and medical costs on behalf of the deputy sheriff. Your specific question is whether county funds may be legally expended to pay for the deputy sheriff's hospital and medical expenses.
The first question to be resolved is whether the "fee" deputy sheriff is a legal deputy sheriff. We direct your attention to OAG 76-122, copy enclosed, an opinion directed to you concerning deputy sheriff positions, where we said in part as follows:
". . . The only legal deputies are those appointed by you to fill deputy positions authorized by the Fiscal Court under KRS 64.530. Under that statute the Fiscal Court is required, not later than the first Monday in May in the year of the election [here, 1973] of the sheriff, to establish by proper order the number of deputies authorized for your office and their compensation. If the Bell County Fiscal Court did not enter such an order in 1973, then under KRS 64.730 the number of deputies actually used, and their compensation, during the immediately preceding sheriff's term would govern. . . ."
The next matter to be considered within the context of the factual situation you have presented concerns the county's status in regard to workmen's compensation insurance. As we told you in OAG 76-694, copy enclosed, the fiscal court is mandatorily required to provide workmen's compensation insurance for its county employes. Employers mandatorily subject to and required to comply with the provisions of the Workmen's Compensation Act include counties, KRS 342.630. All persons in the service of any county, whether elected or appointed, are among those employes subject to the provisions of the Workmen's Compensation Act, KRS 342.640.
Thus, the Fiscal Court of Bell County is mandatorily required to provide workmen's compensation insurance to cover the sheriff's deputies who have been lawfully appointed to fill a deputy position authorized by the fiscal court pursuant to KRS 64.530. The Bell County Fiscal Court must either obtain insurance coverage or qualify as a self-insurer. A county employe or officer who has sustained a work connected injury or disability should file a claim with the Workmen's Compensation Board against the fiscal court and its workmen's compensation insurance carrier if the injured employe and the insurance carrier or self-insured employer cannot agree on the amount of compensation to be received. A claim for work connected disability by a county employe or officer should, therefore, proceed within the framework of the Workmen's Compensation laws and as a Workmen's Compensation claim. The county should not make a payment from its general funds directly to the injured employe or officer.
If a county employe or officer has a claim for a work connected disability and the county has failed to provide workmen's compensation insurance, the employe may invoke the provisions of KRS 342.760 and have the uninsured employers' fund make the payments that the fiscal court is legally responsible for providing. The fiscal court, however, would be liable for payment into the uninsured fund for the amounts authorized to be paid from it on the fiscal court's behalf. Thus, even if the Bell County Fiscal Court has violated the law by failing to provide workmen's compensation insurance coverage, a county employe's claim for a work connected disability, injury or medical benefits should be handled within the framework of the Kentucky Workmen's Compensation Act (KRS Chapter 342).
In answer to your specific question, a legally appointed deputy sheriff who is filling a deputy position authorized by the fiscal court, and who incurs a work connected injury or disability or medical expenses, should file a claim within the framework of the Workmen's Compensation provisions rather than receiving a direct payment from the general funds of the county for expenses incurred as a result of a work connected injury. If a formal claim is filed with the Kentucky Workmen's Compensation Board (the injured employe and the insurance carrier or self-insured employer cannot agree on the amount of workmen's compensation benefits to be paid), the injured employe may desire to obtain the services of an attorney at law.