Workplace Injuries

• Workers' Compensation Cheaters Hurt Legitimate Claimants

  Brent Adams | February 26, 2008 10:08 PM | 0 CommentsRaleigh, NC

  Fortunately, cheaters who try to defraud the workers' compensation system almost always get caught. These few cheaters should be punished severely. They not only hurt their employers and their insurance companies, they also make it harder for legitimate claimants to recover the benefits to which they are entitled.Workers' compensation fraud and wrongdoing by employers and their insurance...

• Pork Processing Plant Workers Contract Illness After Inhaling Pig Brain Particles

  Sheila Chavis | February 08, 2008 4:56 PM | 0 CommentsRaleigh, NC

  A cluster of workers at a pork processing plant in Minnesota have contracted an illness that has been connected with the workers' exposure to particles of pig brains. The workers were found to be exposed by inhaling the bits of pig brain during a process where the brains are blown out of the skull of the pig using compressed air. The brains are harvested packaged and sold primarily to Japan...

• Issue of whether an injury is covered by workers compensation law can be complex

  Brent Adams | January 17, 2008 10:25 PM | 0 CommentsRaleigh, NC

  Employees are entitled to benefits from workers' compensation whenever they receive a personal injury "arising out of and in the course of employment. For example, a machinist received an injury to his eye from flying glass from a cola bottle while on his lunch break that caused blindness in that eye. As he was placing the bottle in the cooler, it exploded. He would be entitled to receive...

• N.C. Workers' Comp Insurers Seek Rate Increase

  Sheila Chavis | September 13, 2007 12:18 PM | 0 CommentsRaleigh, NC

  On Friday, September 1, 2007, the North Carolina Rate Bureau filed a request with the N.C. Department of Insurance for a 5.9% increase in workers' compensation insurance rates. A request for an increase in insurance rates, in itself may be alarming to N.C. employers and employess. However, the requested rate increase pales in comparison to the 2006 request of 12.1%. The Depart of Insurance...

• Occupational Health Clinic That Treated Ground Zero Workers Faces Criticism

  Sheila Chavis | September 07, 2007 12:07 PM | 0 CommentsRaleigh, NC

  A recent article in the New York Times raises questions about the accuracy of data and reports presented by the clinic that took on the responsibility of screening and examining volunteers and people who were working at Ground Zero. The Irving J. Selikoff Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine has examined more than 15,000 workers and volunteers and has overseen the examination of...

• "Going and Coming Rule" Does not Apply to Home Healthcare Nurse

  Brent Adams | August 09, 2007 9:41 AM | 0 CommentsRaleigh, NC

  In workers' compensation cases, a claim is not compensable if an employee is injured while going to work or coming home from work. This is commonly referred to as the "going and coming" rule.There are numerous exceptions to this rule. One exception is the traveling salesman rule which applies to salesmen who are required in their job to travel from customer to customer. In the case of a...

• Can Teaching 6th Graders Cause Compensable Anxiety Disorder?

  Sheila Chavis | July 27, 2007 4:24 PM | 0 CommentsRaleigh, NC

  This past March (3/6/07) the North Carolina Court of Appeals addressed the issue of whether a 6th grade teacher's physician-diagnosed anxiety disorder was compensable under North Carolina's Workers' Compensation Act. After a review of the facts found by the Industrial Commission the Court concluded that teaching sixth graders did not expose the teacher to any stressors that were not experienced...

• Doctor Shopping Employer Required to Pay Benefits

  Brent Adams | June 01, 2007 4:48 PM | 0 CommentsRaleigh, NC

  An employer's brazen doctor shopping efforts to terminate workers' compensation benefits backfired in a recent case. A decision of the North Carolina Industrial Commission granted full workers' compensation benefits to an injured employee and found that the employer's efforts to deny benefits constituted stubborn and unfounded litigiousness and that the appeals were brought by the employer...

• Duke Report Draws Connection Between Obesity and Propensity for Workers' Comp Claims

  Sheila Chavis | April 29, 2007 11:07 AM | 0 CommentsRaleigh, NC

  In a recent research study, two Duke professors examined the claims and records of nearly 12,000 Duke employees from 1997 to 2004. The researchers concluded that extremely obese employees filed two times as many workers' compensation claim as non-obese employees. The study also found that the extremely obese workers had seven times higher medical costs and stayed out of work 13 times longer...

• Worker Killed by Collapsed Wall

  Christina Cole | February 20, 2007 3:21 AM | 0 CommentsRaleigh, NC

  At a major redevelopment project in downtown Durham, a construction worker, 35, was killed in a fatal construction accident.The worker was on the inside of the old offices of Liggett & Myers Tobacco Co. when a brick wall collapsed, crushing him. The building is one of seven vintage structures being rehabilitated for shops.According to police, the worker had only worked at the site for just a few...