Workers’ Compensation
The purpose of the Workers Compensation system is to provide limited benefits to those injured at work regardless of whether or not their employer was at fault for their injury.
Workers Compensation benefits are limited to lost wages and medical costs. The system does not award money for “pain and suffering.” Many injured workers mistakenly believe that “scheduled loss of use awards” and “Section 32 settlements” are payments for their pain and suffering, but they are not. Those payments can represent future lost earnings or medical expenses but do not cover pain and suffering. In order to recover pain and suffering damages, an injured worker must pursue a personal injury claim. In order to have a personal injury cause of action there must be negligence on the part of someone other than ones employer or a co-employee. In many instances there is no negligence involved, other than that of the employer. This means that the injured party would be limited to Workers Compensation benefits.
While Workers’ Compensation benefits are limited, the good news is that in order to collect these benefits, the injured worker does not need to prove negligence or fault. While negligence is not required, the injured worker does need to establish several things to qualify for benefits including employment status at the time of the injury, that the injury arose out of and in the course of employment, that proper and timely notice was given to the employer and that there is a direct causal connection between the medical condition (injury) and the claimed work related accident.
Some Workers Compensation cases do not involve a traumatic incident at all. Instead they may result from repetitive work activities and may develop slowly over a period of time. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is a common medical condition that usually does not involve a traumatic incident. This type of claim is known as an Occupational Disease. Occupational Diseases can involve many different medical conditions resulting from not only repetitive work activities but also exposure to chemicals or dust or even psychological illnesses caused by work related stress.
The Workers Compensation Law is extremely complex. At last count the Workers’ Compensation Laws, Volunteer Firefighters Laws and Volunteer Ambulance Workers Laws as well as corresponding rules and regulations are comprised of more than 300 pages of text. In addition, there are thousands of published cases which interpret the meaning of these laws and rules.
