Selling illegal drugs is grounds to terminate lifetime diability payments.

The Ohio Supreme Court has upheld a decision by the 10th District Court of Appeals to deny reinstatement of a convicted crack cocaine dealer's lifetime disability payments in Lynch v. Industrial Commission of Ohio, No. 2007-0423, 12/19/07.

Henry Lynch began receiving the payments after suffering an occupational neck and spinal injury in 1967. Thirty years later, a federal grand jury indicted Lynch on charges relating to the possession, sale and distribution of crack cocaine from 1994-1997. He pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to possess cocaine with the intent to distribute after the 1997 indictment.

The Special Investigations Unit of the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation learned of the conviction, and a month later, the bureau stopped Lynch's compensation and declared an overpayment. A staff hearing officer determined that selling crack cocaine qualified as employment, as Mr. Lynch was bringing in $300 to $500 a week selling the illegal drug, and the bureau subsequently terminated payments back to 1994, the year Lynch began to sell drugs, according to authorities).

The state's Industrial Commission failed to notify Mr. Lynch of the termination of his benefits, which he appealed after serving prison time. The convicted drug dealer argued that his criminal activity shouldn't count as employment income because of it's illegality.

The Supreme Court didn't agree with this argument.

The court wrote, "Lynch cannot use the illegality of his pursuits as a shield. Lynch exchanged labor for pay on a sustained basis. This constitutes sustained remunerative employment for purposes of permanent total disability."