Posts Tagged ‘NJ workers compensation lawyer’
How to Prove a Repetitive Motion Injury for NJ Workers’ Compensation
When it comes to NJ workers’ compensation, many applicable injuries happen in an instant. For example, an employee trips over an extension cord and fractures her arm, or a delivery driver is injured in a motor vehicle accident on his route. While there can be other issues with these claims, it is pretty clear that the incident and resulting injuries were job-related. However, a substantial number of workplace injuries aren’t so clear-cut, for example a repetitive motion injury.
When an employee is injured due to a repetitive motion, such as typing on a keyboard for long hours or twisting to sort different components of a product on an assembly line, there is less certainty how and when the injury occurred. In these examples, and hundreds of similar situations in NJ workers’ compensation, evidence of the injury becomes substantially more important.
What Is a Repetitive Motion Injury?
Repetitive motion injuries are those ongoing aches and pains that arise gradually and over time. It can take months or even years at a specific job before there is any indication of the injury, and many employees continue to work through the initial warning signs of a potential injury.
These injuries often manifest in the neck, back, shoulders, and extremities. In terms of diagnosis, carpal tunnel, tendinitis, and bursitis.
Certain professions are more susceptible to repetitive motion injuries and resulting NJ workers’ compensation claims. Some of these jobs are transportation operators, such as bus drivers, school teachers, factory workers, painters, custodians, typists and …
Read MoreDoes a Pre-Existing Condition Affect Workers’ Compensation in New Jersey?
You slip and fall at work in New Jersey Whether it was a power cord at the office or spilled liquid on the restaurant’s floor, you are likely entitled to workers’ compensation for medical costs resulting from this fall. For instance, if you injured your neck or badly sprained a wrist trying to break the fall.
These injuries could even keep you from work for multiple days, weeks, or more. Then, you would be entitled to disability benefits under workers’ compensation in New Jersey. However, these injuries were not entirely new. You hurt your neck in a softball game four years earlier or broke your wrist rollerblading last summer and it stayed tender and fragile.
Do these old injuries change anything? If you had a pre-existing condition, of any kind, does it affect your right to workers’ compensation under New Jersey law?
Broad Right to Workers’ Compensation in New Jersey
New Jersey workers’ compensation is available to all employees who suffer a job-related injury. This includes employees who acted negligently. It even applies to incidents that involve the recklessness or negligence of a third party. This policy is not only protective of employees who accept risk of injury as part of their job duties, but keeps employers accountable for training, safety standards, and oversight.
The law in New Jersey even covers exacerbation or acceleration of a pre-existing condition. Employers and insurance companies are prohibited from denying workers’ compensation benefits due to a pre-existing condition. Further, how the original injury …
Read MoreWhere Can I Seek Medical Treatment for a Workplace Injury?
Under 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 restriction that can present a problem for employees is that the employer has control of choice over the medical provider covered by workers’ compensation.
Employer’s Chosen Medical Provider
New Jersey’s Workers’ Compensation Law requires that employers must provide or give employees access to reasonable and necessary medical treatment for a workplace injury. Given this standard of care and responsibility for ensuring the care is available falls to the employer, in New Jersey the employer also chooses the covered medical professionals. Typically, the hospitals and doctors that can treat injured employees are actually determined by the employer’s insurance provider.
When …
Read MoreIn What Direction is New Jersey’s Going and Coming Rule Headed?
Most employees in New Jersey have a regular commute to work. For some individuals this means hopping on the bus or even taking the train into New York, but the majority of New Jersey employees are driving to their jobs. In fact, across the United States over 85% of workers who commute go by automobile.
All of this rush hour traffic leads to multiple accidents on New Jersey roadways every day, and unsurprisingly, these accidents frequently result in injuries to employees who are going or coming from their workplace. The question often asked of a New Jersey workers’ compensation lawyer is whether injuries sustained in a motor vehicle accident going or coming from work qualify for workers’ compensation benefits?
What Does the Statute Say?
Essential to determining whether an injured commuter is entitled to workers’ compensation benefits is a section of the Workers’ Compensation Act. Section 34:15-7 states that workers’ compensation covers accidents, “arising out of and in the course of employment.”
The New Jersey Workers’ Compensation Act goes on to clarify that employment begins when an individual arrives at the employer’s place of business and ends when the employee departs from the workplace. This statement seems to explicitly eliminate the drives to and from work as under workers’ compensation, but the act and New Jersey courts have provided some clarification and exceptions.
How Have New Jersey Courts Interpreted the Workers’ Compensation Act?
In 2014 the New Jersey Supreme Court, in the case Hersh v. County of Morris…
Read MoreIs Settlement Always Final in New Jersey Workers’ Compensation Cases?
In 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 claim.
First, When Settlement Is Final
When the parties agree to a lump sum, single payment as settlement of a workers’ compensation case, the amount paid is final. Referred to as Section 20 settlements, because this is the Section of the Workers’ Compensation Act in New Jersey that dictates the conditions of these payments, these one-off payments are typically preferred by employers and their insurance companies. Those parties know that even if a medical condition worsens or more doctors’ visits are needed, the amount cannot be adjusted.
As the employee is barred from reopening the claim, there is some risk …
Read MoreHow Are Workers’ Compensation Claims Settled in New Jersey?
Employers 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 of the citation for these one-off payments, those familiar with New Jersey workers’ compensation will call this form of settlement a Section 20 settlement.
Approximately 30% of workers’ compensation cases in the State of New Jersey are resolved through the Section 20 mechanism, but employees often enter the contractual agreement for these settlements without fully understanding the pros and cons of doing so. The upside of resolving a workers’ compensation situation through Section 20 is the lump sum becomes immediately available to the employee to use for past, present, and future medical costs. This can be incredibly attractive for …
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