Tag: Workers Comp

Lawmakers in New York are considering a bill that would extend the state’s disability provisions under workers compensation for COVID-19 sufferers and would allow workers to resubmit claims that were denied due to timing.

S.B. 7624, introduced Wednesday and referred to the Rules Committee, states that a claim for compensation for disability based on a diagnosis of COVID-19 would be permitted if it is filed within one year of the effective date of the bill. Currently, workers have two years from their COVID-19 diagnosis to file a claim.

The bill would also permit the re-filing of claims for disability due to COVID-19 that were previously denied.

The provisions would expire two years after the bill’s passage.

 

A Florida appeals court Wednesday vacated workers compensation benefits for a firefighter who suffered a thoracic aortic aneurysm he claimed was work-induced.

The Florida District Court of Appeal Wednesday reversed benefits awarded to John Harlem, a firefighter with the North Collier Fire Control and Rescue District, who was diagnosed in April 2018 with the aneurysm.

Mr. Harlem underwent surgery that rendered him unable to work and sought comp benefits for wage replacement and medical bills.

The claim revolved around the definition of “heart disease” under the state’s comp statute for firefighters. A workers comp judge found the injury to be work-related, relying on court precedence and the legal definition of heart disease.  

The employer appealed, arguing that the injury didn’t rise to the level of heart disease.

The appellate court agreed, saying heart disease in Florida’s comp system only relates to “diseases affecting and weakening the heart muscle through a degradation of the vessels or the valves.” It said the workers comp judge was wrong to broaden the definition to include aortic aneurysm.

 

The Appellate Court of Connecticut ruled Tuesday that a retired police officer was improperly awarded temporary total disability benefits because he had no intention of returning to the workforce at the time he filed for the additional benefits.

Louis Martinoli began working for the Stamford Police Department in 1975 and later underwent surgery based on a compensable heart disease claim filed in 1999.

Although Mr. Martinoli didn’t intend to return to work, he filed a claim for temporary total disability benefits in 2015 after suffering atrial fibrillation and a stroke, according to court documents. The comp commissioner ruled the condition “flowed from the underlying accepted claims of hypertension, coronary artery disease and congestive heart failure.”

The Stamford Police Department contested the claim, arguing that to award temporary total disability benefits to a retiree who doesn’t intend to work again “leads to an unreasonable or bizarre result,” according to the appellate ruling.

The appellate court said in its ruling that the comp commissioner wrongly accepted the claim and that the comp board erred in upholding the determination. It remanded the case back to the comp board with instructions to reverse the comp commissioner’s compensability determination.   

 

An insurance company auditor is not owed workers comps benefits for an alleged stress-related incident that resulted a stay in intensive care, a New York appeals court ruled last week upholding lower court rulings.

According to court papers, the claimant said that prior to having an anxiety attack at work in 2020 she had been discussing her work in a text-based Skype conversation with her supervisor. The interaction elevated her stress and made her feel angry and frustrated “given the additional duties that she had been performing,” according to the Aug. 3 decision in case No. 535539, in the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, Third Department.

“During the conversation, claimant first began to feel certain physical symptoms including blurry vision and ‘excruciating’ pain in her head, all of which she had not previously experienced prior to the work-related incident despite having active prescriptions for anxiety/depression and high blood pressure,” records state.

The woman visited an urgent care center that day and was taken by ambulance to an emergency room, where she complained of a headache and was determined to have elevated blood pressure. She was admitted to the intensive care unit and discharged a day later, after being diagnosed with “essential hypertension, migraine without aura and hypertension urgency,” according to court documents.

The employer, Utica Mutual Insurance Co., denied the claim citing a lack of medical evidence of an injury, no causal relationship and no evidence of stress “greater than that experienced by other similarly situated workers.”

For similar reasons, a Workers’ Compensation Law Judge ruled in favor of the employer and the state Workers’ Compensation Board affirmed.

The appeals court ruling stated “claimant’s peers were subject to the same daily and hourly quotas for completion of audits, and, to the extent that claimant undertook additional mail audits, claimant’s supervisor offered help with her workload if necessary.”

 

The mother of an Arby’s worker who was murdered by a coworker at a restaurant in Hickory Hills, Illinois, in 2017 can’t sue the franchisees, as workers compensation is the exclusive remedy, an Illinois appeals court ruled Tuesday.

Doreen Price sued Lunan Roberts Inc., Lunan Corp., Arby’s Restaurant Group Inc. and Irvin Thomas in connection with the murder of her son, John Price, by Mr. Thomas during the men’s night shift. She claimed the businesses were liable for her son’s death through negligent hiring, retention and supervision of their employees, among other allegations, according to Price v. Lunan Roberts Inc., filed in the Appellate Court of Illinois, First District, Second Division.

At issue was whether the men’s dispute, documented on video surveillance that did not include audio, was work-related or personal, as Ms. Price claimed the two had spent time together outside of work, enjoyed similar hobbies and had a prior dispute over a video game console.

The circuit court granted summary judgment to defendants Lunan Roberts and Lunan Corp., finding that the plaintiff’s exclusive remedy for the injury in the case was under the Workers’ Compensation Act, as there was no proof of the nature of their feud.

The appeals court affirmed, saying “there are simply no facts in the record that the murder was the result of any personal dispute between Price and Thomas. To reach the conclusion plaintiff urges us to reach, we would have to engage in speculation that is not supported by record evidence.”

 

 

Worker safety advocates and attorneys representing employers have mixed reactions to recently announced federal heat safety measures for workers.

Some say employers are already handling the issue; others say more needs to be done.

President Joe Biden said July 27 that his administration is implementing measures designed to protect the U.S. workforce from extreme heat. The announcement came amid record-breaking temperatures in some parts of the country.

The measures include increased Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspections in industries in which workers are exposed to extreme heat – such as agriculture, firefighting and construction – and the adoption of federal heat protections. The president also instructed the Department of Labor to issue its first-ever Hazard Alert for heat, which affirms that workers have heat-related protections under federal law.

Ed Pratt, director of risk services for St. Louis-based specialty insurer Safety National Casualty Corp., said employers are already taking steps to protect workers against heat and that to do otherwise would be bad for business.

“There’s no question [employers] recognize the exposure,” he said. “They haven’t been ignoring this. … What they continue to do is monitor their employees and make things available to their employees.”

Many employers address heat by installing hydration stations, emphasizing acclimatization and warning workers of the dangers of prolonged heat exposure, Mr. Pratt said.

Beeta Lashkari, an attorney with Washington–based Conn Maciel Carey LLP, which represents employers, said, “Most of our clients do have a heat illness prevention program already in place, so this is sort of nothing new to the employer community.”

Further efforts to address heat issues at the federal level are ongoing.

OSHA Assistant Secretary Doug Parker said in a statement that a heat illness prevention standard continues to be a top priority for the administration.

“As we work toward a final rule on heat illness prevention, we’re also enhancing our enforcement compliance efforts to make sure employers and workers understand the dangers of heat illness and how to prevent it,” he said.

Ms. Lashkari said her clients advocate for a standard that is “performance-oriented and flexible.”

“We don’t want a standard to come out that’s so prescriptive that it makes all our clients’ programs, which have been really effective, go out the window,” she said.

Some say the targeted heat-enforcement measures Mr. Biden announced don’t go far enough.

“It’s important … that the president recognizes there’s an urgent issue,” said Marcy Goldstein-Gelb, co-executive director of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health. “In some ways there’s a risk of this announcement creating some confusion about what’s needed. What’s really needed is a standard, and fast.”

Ms. Goldstein-Gelb called on Congress to pass an interim heat standard that could go into effect immediately instead of waiting out the OSHA rulemaking process.

“Standards that OSHA creates take way too long,” she said. 

Scott DeBow, principal for health, safety and environmental for Avetta LLC, a Houston-based supply chain risk management company, said the presidential action on workplace heat was warranted.

“In light of the number of increasing fatalities over the past few years, I think that was appropriate, and we need to draw attention to that,” he said. “We can’t forget at the end of the day that we’re talking about someone’s family member.”

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 344 workers died between 2011 and 2019 from environmental heat exposure, although some workplace safety experts say the death toll is likely higher due to underreporting or misreporting, such as when deaths are attributed to a medical condition such as a heart attack. 

Mr. DeBow said employers must provide training and resources to help workers properly deal with factors leading to heat illness.

“We really know what we need to do to be able to anticipate the type of things that employees need to work safely, and we need to make sure we are consistently driving those risk-based approaches,” he said.

Average annual premium renewal pricing increased in most lines of commercial insurance coverage last month, but the pace of rate hikes slackened in several areas, according to a report Tuesday from Ivans Insurance Services, a unit of Applied Systems Inc.

Among lines where rate increases accelerated, commercial property was up 9.7% in July, compared with 9.3% in June; commercial auto was up 6.6%, compared with 6.5%; and business owners policy rates increased 7.8%, compared with 7.6%.

In lines where the level of increases fell, general liability rates rose 5.4%, compared with 5.6% in the prior month and umbrella rates rose 4.9%, compared with 5.9%.

Workers compensation rates fell by 0.5% in July compared with 0.7% in July.

 

 

 

A new report from the Department of Health Policy at Vanderbilt University Medical Center concludes that many individuals with opioid use disorder are not receiving proper medical treatment for dependency.

The report, published Thursday in JAMA Internal Medicine, said only 22% of the 40,000 individuals with the disorder who were studied in 2021 used the dependency drug buprenorphine for a full year.

Out-of-pocket costs were cited as a reason for the low use of drugs such as buprenorphine.

Researchers said that if medications such as buprenorphine were added to a federally approved list of drugs recognized to help with preventive services, it would likely help with the cost barrier, as private insurers would be mandated to offer coverage.

Opioid dependency drugs were also the subject of a July report by Enlyte LLC highlighting medication-assisted treatment in workers compensation claims.

That report showed that prescriptions for medications used to treat opioid dependency and overdose in comp rose 11.6% in 2022.

The U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia Monday ruled for Westinghouse Electric Corp. in a lawsuit brought by the widow of an electrician who was killed while working at an Army installation.

Michael Hill was installing an electrical transformer at the site in  Franklin County, Pennsylvania, in September 2015 when he came in contact with an energized existing transformer. His widow, Tamara Hill, filed a negligence claim against Westinghouse over its handling of the energized transformer.

A district court granted summary judgment for Westinghouse, and Ms. Hill appealed.

The appellate court affirmed the district court’s decision, saying it had correctly ruled that Westinghouse was within a class protected by the state’s “statute of repose,” which applies to “economic actors who perform acts of ‘individual expertise’ akin to those commonly thought to be performed by builders.”

Westinghouse, the appellate court said in its ruling, helped design the transformer and provided expertise for its construction, thereby rendering it immune from litigation.

 

 

An investigation into Amazon Inc. warehousing operations in Logan Township, New Jersey, found workers exposed to ergonomic hazards, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced Friday.

The agency also said there was inadequate medical care for injured workers.

OSHA issued Amazon a citation for ergonomic hazards and proposed $15,625 in penalties, alleging the company exposed employees to “ergonomic hazards capable of causing serious physical harm.”

Inspectors found Amazon “required employees to perform tasks leading to bodily stress that had caused, were causing and were likely to cause musculoskeletal disorders,” according to a statement.  

OSHA, alleging that Amazon had also failed to use established controls to ensure that injured employees received proper medical care, issued a Hazard Alert Letter for what it called a “medical treatment failure,” a concern found in other Amazon facilities in Deltona, Florida, and Castleton, New York this year.

The agency has 18 open federal inspections at Amazon locations in the U.S. This marked the sixth time this year that OSHA has cited Amazon for violations, including citations issued for violations at warehouse facilities in Castleton; Deltona;  Aurora and Colorado Springs, Colorado; Nampa, Idaho; Waukegan, Illinois; Bayonne, New Jersey; and New Windsor, New York.

Amazon has 15 business days to comply with the latest citation or request an informal conference with OSHA.