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Personal Injury

Recent Posts in Personal Injury Category

  • How Do Missouri Workers’ Compensation Cases Settle?

    The vast majority of workers’ compensation claims in Missouri settle out of court. Only a few go to trial with the administrative law judge , and even fewer are appealed to the Labor and Industrial Relations Commission (LIRC) or into the court system. Settling your claim, however, ends your case. If you do not settle for enough, you will not have the full amount of compensation that you need and ...
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  • Older Motorcycle Accident Victims Protected By the Eggshell Skull Rule

    It is motorcycle season in western Missouri. While it is intuitive and well known that car accidents involving motorcycles are more likely to cause serious injuries to the biker than other types of crashes, one contributing factor is often overlooked: The rising age of the average motorcyclist. Motorcycle Accident Injuries Tend to Be Serious Given the lack of protective equipment that bikers have, ...
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  • Can I Get Fired for Filing for Workers’ Comp?

    A frequent concern that employees have when they get hurt on the job is getting fired for exercising their rights to workers’ compensation . The law in Missouri is clear: Your employer is prohibited from retaliating against you for filing a workers’ compensation claim or reporting a workplace injury. In practice, though, it is more complicated. Missouri Law Forbids Retaliation Against Workers ...
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  • What are Loss of Consortium Damages in Missouri?

    Something that many accident victims in Missouri are surprised to learn is that their loved ones may also be entitled to compensation in a personal injury claim. Even though the loved one may not have been hurt in the victim’s car accident , he or she may still suffer from it. Personal injury law aims to compensate everyone for the losses they suffered in the accident. This includes the various ...
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  • Why is the Second Injury Fund Statute So Confusing?

    Many of the recent disputes in Missouri workers’ compensation law have centered on the reading of Missouri Statute 287.220 . The Labor and Industrial Relations Commission (LIRC) has been repeatedly reprimanded by Missouri courts for applying the wrong subsection of the law. Why has the LIRC, which is supposed to be intimately familiar with workers’ compensation law in the state, consistently made ...
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  • NHTSA Releases Fatal Car Accident Data from 2021

    The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) released its preliminary estimates about fatal car accidents across the country in 2021. On paper, the results do not look good, with a 16-year high in the number of roadway fatalities and a staggering increase from the year prior. But the data is misleading in several years – sometimes extremely misleading. While the numbers are still ...
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  • LIRC Affirms Award Under Last Exposure Rule

    Given the Labor and Industrial Relations Commission’s (LIRC) longstanding trend towards denying any claim for workers’ compensation that it can, a recent affirmation of an administrative law judge’s grant of temporary total disability and survivor benefits comes as a surprise. The specific facts of the case offered an opportunity for the LIRC to deny the claim, but it chose not to. Diesel Mechanic ...
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  • What Compensation is Available in Personal Injury Cases?

    In our personal injury blog posts, we have talked a lot about the need for victims to get the compensation that they deserve. But what does that mean? What types of compensation is a victim entitled to receive after, say, a car accident ? What Compensation Can Victims Recover? The short answer is that victims are entitled to financial compensation for all of their losses – be they financial, ...
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  • What is Maximum Medical Improvement in Missouri?

    Maximum medical improvement, or MMI, is a fundamental concept in workers’ compensation law in Missouri. It is the point where the victim’s workplace injuries have stabilized and will not improve any more. Once MMI has been reached, workers’ compensation benefits shift from medical care and temporary disability benefits to permanent disability benefits. What is Maximum Medical Improvement in ...
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  • Who Can I Sue After an Intentional Car Crash?

    A New Jersey man has been arrested and charged with numerous crimes after he appeared to deliberately run over a woman after a car accident . Leaving the criminal aspects of the case aside, the incident raises an important issue in personal injury law: Will the victim be able to recover any compensation for her injuries because the “accident” was intentional? Man Appears to Intentionally Run Over ...
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  • How Light Duty Roles Can Create Workplace Conflicts

    After a workplace injury, the goal for most workers is to get back on the job. While workers’ compensation will cover their medical expenses and the wages they have lost while they were recovering, once a doctor clears the worker for light duty, those temporary disability benefits can disappear if the worker refuses a reasonable offer to come back to work. While employers in Missouri are not ...
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  • Do Missouri Employers Have to Offer Light Duty?

    Under Missouri workers’ compensation law, employers are not legally obligated to provide light duty work to employees who have had work restrictions imposed by a doctor after a workplace injury. However, for financial reasons, many employers do provide light duty roles. Employees who are offered an adequate light duty role may lose workers’ compensation benefits if they turn it down. What is Light ...
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  • Direct Victims Versus Bystanders for Emotional Distress Claims

    In a couple of our blog posts about car accidents in Missouri, we have delved into when victims and bystanders can recover compensation for their emotional distress . Most recently, we looked at a baseball player’s serious car crash , which was witnessed by his wife. That accident touched on an important issue in Missouri’s personal injury law : When someone is a bystander or a direct victim. ...
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  • Baseball Player’s Car Accident Shows How Emotional Distress Claims Can Work

    A recent car accident involving a baseball player highlights an important issue in how Missouri’s personal injury law handles claims for emotional distress . Mets First Baseman Involved in Serious Car Accident The accident happened on March 13 . Pete Alonso , the first baseman for the New York Mets, was going to spring training in Florida when another driver ran a red light and t-boned his pickup ...
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  • The LIRC’s Streak of Losses in Court Continues

    The Labor and Industrial Relations Commission (LIRC) is on a very bad streak, as yet another Missouri Court of Appeals overturned its poorly-reasoned denial of workers’ compensation . The newest case is just the latest in a disturbing trend that suggests that the LIRC is less interested in doing justice than it is in throwing out legitimate claims for workers’ compensation. LIRC Muddles Its Way ...
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  • If a Medical Condition Causes a Car Crash, Who is Liable?

    A woman was seriously hurt when she fell asleep at the wheel and caused a single-vehicle car accident in northern Missouri. While falling asleep at the wheel due to fatigue is a strong sign of negligence, what if a driver becomes incapacitated because of a medical condition, like a seizure? The personal injury lawyers at the Smith Law Office in St. Joseph, Missouri, explain what can happen. Driver ...
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  • Missouri Appeals Court Roasts LIRC, Again

    The Missouri Court of Appeals issued another workers’ compensation decision last week, overturning a ruling by the Labor and Industrial Relations Commission (LIRC) . Both the content and the style of the appellate court’s ruling give a sense of frustration with the LIRC’s new, disturbing trend of denying coverage to hurt workers. A “Legal Odyssey” of a Case Returns to the Court of Appeals The ...
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  • Why is Missouri’s Texting and Driving Law Controversial?

    Missouri’s law against texting and driving is drawing controversy. Unlike the law in most other states, Missouri’s texting and driving statute does not cover other uses of a cell phone in the car, and only applies to people under the age of 21 and to commercial drivers. As a result, the law is nearly impossible to enforce, and does very little to reduce the number of car accidents in the state. ...
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  • Can I Sue My Employer for a Work Injury?

    In a recent blog post, we looked at whether workers’ compensation was an exclusive remedy for workers who have been hurt on the job. Generally, it is: Injured workers have to go through the workers’ compensation system, rather than file a personal injury lawsuit against their employer. However, there are exceptions to this rule that can let workers file a lawsuit against their employer and try to ...
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  • Are Unrestrained Drivers Liable for Their Injuries?

    Many multiple-vehicle car accidents in St. Joseph and the rest of Missouri are not the fault of a single driver. Instead, both drivers share some fault for the resulting injuries. We have covered Missouri’s shared fault rules and comparative negligence in the past in our blog, but what happens when the victim in a crash is hurt because he or she was not wearing a seatbelt? Missouri has a statute ...
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  • Is Workers’ Compensation an Exclusive Remedy?

    In prior posts about Missouri workers’ compensation law, we have referred to the system as a trade-off between employers and their employees. One of the biggest implications of that trade-off is that workers’ compensation is the exclusive remedy that injured workers have for on-the-job accidents. Given how workers’ compensation is strictly construed by courts and constantly tightened by the state ...
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  • Does Insurance Cover Hit-and-Run Accidents?

    The suspect of a robbery and a serious hit-and-run car accident in St. Joseph has been taken into custody. The incident raises a question that no one wants to be in a position to ask: Will insurance cover my expenses after a hit-and-run accident? Hit-and-Run Suspect Arrested The incident happened at Menards early in the afternoon of January 25, 2022. Police say that the suspect stole several items ...
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  • When Does Workers’ Compensation Start Paying Out?

    Missouri workers who get hurt on the job are entitled to workers’ compensation . When that compensation actually gets paid, though, is very important. People who read our blog may have noticed that some of the cases we have covered involve workplace injuries that happened years earlier. These cases are outliers, though, because they took a judge or magistrate to resolve the dispute. The vast ...
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  • What is the Last Clear Chance Rule?

    The last clear chance doctrine is an aspect of personal injury law that Missouri used to have, before it moved from contributory negligence to comparative negligence rules . While Missouri no longer uses the last clear chance doctrine, it is still a great way to see how the law changes to make things fairer. Shared Fault Rules: Contributory and Comparative Negligence In many situations where ...
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  • LIRC Uses Idiopathic Injury Rule to Deny Award, Again

    The Labor and Industrial Relations Commission (LIRC) has once again turned to the idiopathic injury rationale to deny workers’ compensation to a hurt worker. The specific facts of this case show just how unworkable this rationale can be. Medical Complications from Truck Accident Leads to Leg Amputation Back in February, 2014, a truck driver with diabetes left Missouri for Arkansas. In Arkansas, he ...
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