Tag: Workers Comp

A New York appeals court Thursday reversed an administrative decision that had disallowed a psychological injury claim filed by a New York City Transit Authority train conductor who said he developed anxiety due to COVID-19 exposure in the workplace.

The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York said the Workers’ Compensation Board erred in denying the conductor’s mental injury claim and finding that the injury was noncompensable.

The worker had claimed he developed anxiety and experienced an exacerbation of preexisting psychiatric conditions because of his high-risk exposure to COVID-19 and “unsafe work environment in which he was not provided adequate personal protective equipment,” the ruling states.

The transit authority challenged the claim, and a workers comp judge agreed with its contention that the stress the employee was under was the same as other workers faced during the pandemic.  

The Workers’ Compensation Board affirmed the judge’s decision.

The appellate court said the board “improperly applies a disparate burden to claimants seeking benefits for contracting the virus as compared to those, like him, seeking benefits for psychological injuries stemming from exposure to COVID-19 in the workplace.”

The court remanded the matter to the board to reassess whether a causal connection existed between the psychological injury and the workplace.

 

Workers on the job for less than one year make up about 40% of all California workers compensation claims, and employees with less tenure are more than twice as likely to have a claim relative to the statewide average, according to a report released Thursday by the Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau of California.

The report, Impacts of Employee Tenure on Workers’ Compensation Claim Frequency in California, found that workers with longer tenure often have a higher share of cumulative trauma indemnity claims and that the average incurred losses on indemnity claims are steeper for longer-tenured workers.

Researchers said employees with less job experience are more likely to be involved in work-related injuries due to lower skills and less awareness of safety practices than more experienced workers.

The study focused on tenure patterns of injured workers who are 16 years of age and older, and it excluded COVID-19 claims.

The report says that the share of work injury claims from employees with 10 or more years of job experience declined between 2018 and 2022 while the claim share from workers with between five and nine years of job tenure increased slightly during that same timeframe.

 

 

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek on Wednesday signed into law legislation that creates criminal penalties for employers that falsify payroll records to lower workers compensation premiums.

The measure, Senate Bill 1580, says any employer that submits a false payroll report to the Workers’ Compensation Board, its chairperson or the director of the Department of Consumer and Business Services to get a decreased workers comp rate commits a Class A misdemeanor. Violators face a maximum fine of $125,000 plus financial restitution.

The measure received final legislative approval Wednesday.

Workers compensation patients had a higher prevalence of psychosocial risk factors than private-insurance patients, and a stronger association between psychosocial risk factors and functional outcomes, according to a study released Thursday by the Workers Compensation Research Institute.

Researchers said psychosocial risk factors include poor recovery expectations after an injury, fear avoidance, poor coping, catastrophizing, and perceived injustice, and that previous studies have documented that psychosocial factors are a strong predictor of adverse outcomes in patients.

The study examined types of injuries and correlations with mental struggles, finding that one-third of lower back injury patients in the comp system scored high on psychosocial risk. The study also found that half of such patients had high levels of “fear avoidance” and “negative coping,” and 12% reported having a “negative mood.”

These psychosocial risk factors often prolong disability and return to work, especially for musculoskeletal injuries, WCRI said.

Early identification of psychosocial risk factors is recommended by occupational medical treatment and disability guidelines to mitigate the effects on claim outcomes, according to the study.

 

 

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers on Friday signed into law various amendments to the state’s workers compensation law.  

Acting on a recommendation from the Workers Compensation Advisory Council, the governor approved Assembly Bill 1073, which makes several changes to the state’s workers comp system.

The law increases the amount of large Uninsured Employer Fund claims requiring reimbursement from workers comp insurers from $1 million to $2 million; it allows lump sum payments for permanent partial disability for unaccrued compensation to be paid in advance voluntarily in some undisputed claims; and it increases the permanent partial disability weekly rate by $8.

It makes other minor revisions to existing law, such as replacing certain gendered references with gender-neutral language. 

 

 

The Ohio Court of Appeals on Tuesday vacated a state Industrial Commission decision that found an employer didn’t violate certain safety requirements at the time of a fire extinguisher inspector’s death.

Sharmel Culver obtained death benefits following the March 2016 death of her husband, Kenneth Ray Jr., an employee of TimkenSteel Corp., and later sought an additional workers compensation award over claims that the company violated certain safety requirements at the time of the fatality.

Mr. Ray asphyxiated due to unsafe oxygen levels in an elevator control room where he was tasked with inspecting fire extinguishers.

A hearing officer denied the additional claim, questioning whether nitrogen gas present at the time sufficiently met the threshold of “toxic gas” to trigger the additional safety violation against the employer.

Ms. Culver challenged the finding, but a magistrate judge agreed with the hearing officer, finding evidence existed to show nitrogen is not toxic and is not an air contaminant.

Ms. Culver again appealed, and the Court of Appeals found the hearing officer erred in finding that nitrogen is not an air contaminant. It also said that it was “undisputed” that the toxic mixture caused Mr. Ray’s death.

The court remanded the case to the commission to reassess whether the additional comp claim is warranted.  

The death of a 21-year-old worker at a golf cart manufacturing plant in Georgia that occurred following a mishap involving an earbud has gained the attention of workplace safety advocates, who are warning about the dangers associated with such devices.

The woman died March 9 after becoming trapped in machinery at the Club Car LLC facility in Evans while trying to locate one of her AirPods. She was trying to retrieve it from under a conveyor belt.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration confirmed the agency is investigating the incident.

A Club Car representative didn’t respond to a request for comment. 

Earbud use in the workplace is “certainly something that we’re seeing a lot more,” said Edwin Palmer, an attorney with Pittsburgh-based Burns White LLC, who represents employers in OSHA matters. 

Companies, he said, must ensure workers are not being put into a “potentially dangerous or hazardous situation by wearing headphones, especially around workplaces that have a lot of activity.”

Mr. Palmer urged employers in industries such as manufacturing, transportation and construction to develop policies governing earbud use to mitigate risk.

“You’re not going to have situational awareness when you’ve got music playing into your ears or if you’re talking on the phone with somebody,” said Don Enke, St. Louis-based vice president of risk services, for Safety National Casualty Corp.

Since there is no OSHA standard governing workplace earbud use, any citations for safety violations related to their use would be under the agency’s general duty clause, he said.

While the Georgia case involved someone who was killed while trying to locate a dropped earbud, the issue is especially problematic because headphone use can prevent employees at high-risk work sites from hearing alarms or the approach of dangerous vehicles, experts say.

 “It’s a real challenge for employers because many workers are wearing earbuds,” said Bruce Main, Ann Arbor, Michigan-based owner of Design Safety Engineering Inc., a risk assessment company. “It’s not unusual at all. And the idea that you could drop one is certainly reasonably foreseeable.”

A Risk & Insurance Management Society Inc. spokesman said that in food production and manufacturing it’s “common practice for organizations to have policies in place that prohibit workers … from using earphones and cell phones.”

To ensure workers aren’t wearing wireless earbuds in the workplace, especially in dangerous jobs, employers must start by having written policies in place specifically prohibiting the items, said John Lastella, Hauppauge, New York-based vice president of claims for third-party administrator Broadspire, a subsidiary of Crawford & Co.

Some of his clients, Mr. Lastella said, are updating employee manuals with prohibitions on earbud use and offering courses designed to make workers aware of the inherent dangers of earbud use in the workplace.

 

 

 

 

The Intermediate Court of Appeals of West Virginia on Monday reversed a decision that had found compensable a workers compensation claim filed by an injured medical transport driver.

The appeals court said the Workers’ Compensation Board of Review wrongly overturned a claim administrator’s order denying a workers comp claim filed by the driver for Hometown Transportation LLC.

The driver was injured in a vehicle accident in April 2023 while on his way to pick up a client for transport to a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital.

A claim administrator denied the claim in May 2023. A urine screening had found several substances in the driver’s body at the time of the accident, although a doctor’s report noted that there was no evidence he was under the influence or impaired at the time.

The comp board reversed the claim administrator and found the claim compensable for fractures and other injuries.

Hometown Transportation challenged the finding, arguing that the board failed to consider a documented history of substance abuse as well as criminal charges stemming from the accident.

The West Virginia State Police have since charged the driver with driving under the influence, according to the ruling.  

 

Lawmakers in Louisiana are considering a pair of bills that would dictate how employers and workers compensation insurers can deny and defend against claims.

H.B. 764, introduced Monday, states that no defense asserting no compensability or causation of injury shall be permitted in any appeal if such defense “was not asserted at the first opportunity as a basis for denial of authorization of a medical treatment.”

H.B. 765, also introduced Monday, creates “a rebuttable presumption of compensability” 90 days following the date of a work accident.

 

 

 

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration has imposed additional penalties on an Ohio rubber hose manufacturer that was cited after a worker suffered severe injuries in June 2023.

OSHA said Monday it assessed an additional $321,489 in proposed penalties against Bellefontaine-based HBD/Thermoid Inc. The company was cited in December after the incident, in which the worker was pulled into a machine.

OSHA has now cited HBD/Thermoid for a total of 14 violations — one willful, 11 serious and two other-than-serious. The company has 15 business days to contest the latest citation and proposed penalties.