If you are injured playing basketball with friends and fracture your arm, you need health insurance to help cover the medical bills from hospital visit or expenses for other care. Depending on your health insurance plan, there are many in New Jersey, you may pay a certain portion of these expenses “out of pocket.” If you are working as a bartender and fall on the wet floor, fracturing your arm, you are entitled to workers’ compensation to cover the medical expenses. Workers’ compensation is mandated by New Jersey law, but provided through your employer. In New Jersey, nearly all employers are required to have workers’ compensation insurance to cover these incidents. Therefore, a form of insurance also covers these expenses. While these examples show the basic difference between health insurance and workers’ compensation insurance, the questions and interworking of these two insurance plans are much more in-depth. If I am
Read MoreMost Frequent Construction Injuries on New Jersey Job Sites Workplace injuries can occur in any environment or location. There are nearly four million nonfatal work injuries in the United States every year, and they happened across all industries, locations, and level of severity. Even employees who work in office buildings and spend most of the workday at a desk are susceptible to repetitive motion injuries, trips, falls, and electric shock. One industry with an inordinate number of injuries is construction. Construction workers in New Jersey are exposed to some obvious, and serious, risks. Job sites require the use of heavy equipment and machinery. Employees must manage working from heights and using ladders. Heavy, bulky objects and materials must be transported, often through human labor. These risks, and others place construction sites squarely at the top of many reports that look at dangerous work environments. What Is Being Done to Prevent Construction Injuries? In
Read MoreUnder New Jersey law there are several restrictions on an injured employee’s recovery of workers’ compensation benefits. Some of these restrictions apply to the nature of the injury, for instance there is a basic requirement that the injury happened in the course of employment. This restriction means employers, and their workers’ compensation insurance companies, are not required to provide any benefits to employees who are injured at a recreational league basketball game or doing yard work. Other restrictions are procedure based. An employee must file a workers’ compensation lawsuit within two years of from the date of the injury or two years from the last benefit payment, whichever is later. After this two year statute of limitations runs an employee is barred from filing a claim with the New Jersey Department of Labor. A New Jersey workers’ compensation lawyer can describe and explain every restriction required to qualify for benefits. One
Read MoreIn our last blog post we discussed two ways settlement arrangements are reached in workers’ compensation claims in New Jersey. For many parties, these settlements have a sense of finality and conclusion. In some cases, this is true, and the claim cannot be reevaluated at a later date. However, The Law Offices of Albert J. Talone have represented quite a few clients in the instances when settlement was not the end of claim for an injured worker. If you missed our last post, let’s catch-up quickly. There are two ways to settle a workers’ compensation case in New Jersey. Both offer pros and cons that should be considered by an injured employee and his or her legal representative. Sometimes, refusing to settle is the best strategy. However, when settlement is on the table, one of the major distinctions between types of settlement is whether or not you can reopen the
Read MoreEmployers and their insurance providers often see workers’ compensation claims, and the process of making benefit payments, as an ongoing burden. For these parties, it is valuable and preferable if the situation is finalized swiftly and efficiently through a contractual arrangement with you, the injured employee. Therefore, it is very likely that in the course of reporting your work-related injury and seeking workers’ compensation benefits (even if you haven’t filed a formal claim with the Department of Labor), your employer or an insurance provider has made an offer to settle. When this offer is extended, most likely it will come from the insurance company, you have two options under New Jersey law for settling your case. Accepting a Lump Sum Settlement The New Jersey Statutes Annotated (N.J.S.A.) 34:15-20 provides a mechanism for employers, through or with the insurance company, to make a one-time payment to an injured employee. Often, because
Read MoreFew people are drawing a connection between the misuse and substance abuse of opioids that is sweeping the United States and workers’ compensation insurance. However, for employees in New Jersey there is reason to believe that the governmental response to opioid abuse will directly impact the workers’ compensation scheme in the state. Background Information on Opioid Misuse in New Jersey Between 2004 and 2015 the number of drug overdoses in New Jersey exponentially grew, and most of the deaths are from an overdose of heroine or morphine. There were only 362 heroine and morphine deaths in 2004, but a scary 961 deaths in 2015. This rise in fatalities from opioids is due in part to fentanyl, an incredibly strong and dangerous opioid, being mixed with street heroine. What mirrors this epidemic in illegal opioids is the misuse of prescription painkillers in New Jersey. Data shows that for many heroine users,
Read MoreQuite often, expenses and costs are perceived as a barrier to legal representation and recovery. Admittedly, it is true that participation in the modern day legal system can be costly. However, when it comes to workers’ compensation in New Jersey, the law provides mechanisms that try to ensure an injured employee can afford the costs of filing a claim. Therefore, this post will answer two questions: what costs are associated with a workers’ compensation claim and what mechanisms help alleviate these costs? Compensation for Your Lawyer New Jersey limits the amount and process for payment of a workers’ compensation lawyer. This provides safeguards for an injured employee and also ensures the path to recovering workers’ compensation benefits is available to all workers. First, workers’ compensation lawyers in New Jersey are paid on a contingency basis. This means you do not pay your lawyer until a settlement is obtained from the
Read MoreWhile certain jobs and job-related activities have inherent risks, a number of workplace injuries happen when employees do not or cannot follow workplace safety policies and procedures. Often, these accidents happen when there is improper training of an employee for his or her role or when mental factors prevent an employee from operating at 100% while on the job. It is incredibly common for an employee to say, “I just wasn’t thinking straight,” or “I was stressed and trying to rush,” after an accident occurs. When a workplace injury happens for these reasons, many employees and employers want to know how the employee’s mental state or mental fatigue may affect a workers’ compensation claim. Underlying Cause of a Workplace Injury Lawyers and workers’ compensation insurance companies frequently discuss the most common types of injuries that occur at work. In New Jersey, similar to the rest of the country, employees are
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