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Workplace Injury

Recent Posts in Workplace Injury Category

  • Employers Can Now Retaliate Against Former Employees for Reporting Work Injuries

    The foreseeable effects of “strictly construing” Missouri’s workers’ compensation laws continue to unfold. Just last week, the Supreme Court of Missouri ruled that employers could legally discriminate against former employees who filed for workers’ compensation or reported a workplace injury. The pertinent statutes were not crystal clear that such retaliation was unlawful, so the Supreme Court ...
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  • LIRC Member Ignores Subjectivity of Workplace Injuries

    In our last blog post on workers’ compensation law in Missouri, we looked at how it took an appeals court to say that injuries do not have to be instantaneous to be compensable through workers’ comp. An underlying issue in that case is how injuries can be subjective: Activities that hurt one person may not hurt someone else. While this may seem obvious, at least one member of the Labor and ...
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  • Appeals Court Affirms Workers’ Compensation When Injuries Were Not Instantaneous

    A recent workers’ compensation case made it to a Missouri Court of Appeals after the employer claimed that the worker’s injury was not compensable because the accident did not immediately produce crippling symptoms. The case is a sign of how tilted the field of workers’ compensation law has become in Missouri. Worker Feels Symptoms Day After Accident The case is Harper v. Springfield Rehab & ...
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  • Workers’ Comp Cases Can Become Disability Discrimination Lawsuits

    If you get hurt on the job, you are often entitled to workers’ compensation. Additionally, if your injuries are bad enough, you may become disabled under the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA. This is important because, if you are covered by the ADA but are able to return to work in some capacity, often by performing light duty work, you are protected from workplace discrimination based on ...
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  • Missouri Strictly Construes Its Workers’ Compensation Laws

    In our last blog post about workers’ compensation law in Missouri, we looked at the definition of a “dependent” for survival benefits. The term had been, once again, strictly construed by the Labor and Industrial Relations Commission (LIRC) in order to deny a claim for benefits. It has not always been this difficult to recover compensation for work-related injuries in Missouri. What it Means to ...
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  • What is a Dependent for Survival Benefits?

    The Missouri Labor and Industrial Relations Commission (LIRC) has, once again, shown that it will go to great lengths to deny any workers’ compensation claim that it can, all under the guise of “strictly construing” the provisions of the state’s workers’ compensation law. Most recently, it reached to great lengths to interpret the law in a way that would deprive a dependent ex-wife of survivor ...
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  • Can You File for Workers’ Compensation and Sue at the Same Time?

    Occasionally, workers who have been hurt on the job have the option of either filing a claim for workers’ compensation or a personal injury lawsuit. When they have these options, though, the “election of remedies” doctrine prohibits them from benefitting from both, as this would lead to a double payment. A recent case at the Missouri Court of Appeals is an example. Workers’ Compensation Award ...
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  • Missouri Legalizes Recreational Marijuana: What This Means for Workers’ Compensation Claims

    Now that Missouri has legalized recreational marijuana, it raises an important question for employees in the state: If you get hurt on the job while high on marijuana, can you still recover workers’ compensation ? The answer is sometimes, but you may find the claims process to be more difficult than if you were sober. Missouri Legalizes Recreational Marijuana One of the issues on yesterday’s ...
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  • What is an Open Medical Workers’ Compensation Award in Missouri?

    In some cases, workers’ compensation claims can recover what are known as “open medical expenses.” While the circumstances that can lead to these “medical open” awards are narrow, they appeared in one recent case before the Labor and Industrial Relations Commission (LIRC). Commission Affirms “Open Medical” Award The case, Burns v. Wal-Mart, involved a cashier who tripped and fell over a wooden ...
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  • The Jurisdiction of Missouri’s Workers’ Compensation Law

    Each state has its own workers’ compensation system. The small differences between those employment laws can drastically alter how much compensation injured workers can receive after a work injury. To prevent hurt workers from shopping around for a workers’ compensation system that gives them the best benefits, each state has rules that limit the jurisdiction of their workers’ compensation laws. A ...
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  • 8 Reasons a Workers’ Compensation Claim Can Get Denied

    In Missouri, if you are an employee and you get hurt on the job, you can be entitled to workers’ compensation. However, workers’ compensation is a type of insurance: Your employer pays regular premiums to an insurance company so the company pays for certain costs of workplace injuries that fall within the policy’s coverage. Importantly, some workplace accidents and injuries are going to fall ...
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  • Can Workers’ Compensation Cause an SSDI Offset?

    In our last blog post about workers’ compensation, we looked at Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits, and when injured workers were eligible for them. One thing that we mentioned but did not detail was what happened when you receive both workers’ compensation benefits and SSDI benefits. The SSDI Offset Injured workers can recover both workers’ compensation benefits as well as SSDI ...
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  • What is SSDI and am I Eligible After a Workplace Injury?

    If you get hurt at work in Missouri, you are usually entitled to workers’ compensation. However, if you suffer a significant disability that makes it impossible for you to work after the accident, you may also become eligible for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits. While these benefits can help you get closer to your original wage rate, the eligibility requirements are strict. ...
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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 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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  • 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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  • 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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  • 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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  • 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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  • 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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  • What Workers’ Compensation Benefits are Available in Missouri?

    Employees who get hurt on the job in Missouri are often entitled to workers’ compensation. But what does “compensation” mean? Here is what it includes. 3 Types of Workers Compensation Benefits in Missouri Each state has a different way of structuring workers’ compensation. Missouri’s system provides 3 kinds of benefits to hurt workers: Medical treatment, including travel expenses Disability ...
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  • How Bad is the Brock Decision for Hurt Workers?

    A few weeks ago, we covered a workers’ compensation case where the Missouri Supreme Court narrowed co-worker liability. The negative effects of that decision on workplace safety cannot be understated. Missouri Supreme Court Narrows Co-Worker Liability The issue is fairly simple: What can workers do when they are hurt on the job by one of their coworkers? For example, in the case that the Missouri ...
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  • Missouri Court Narrows Co-Worker Liability

    The Missouri Supreme Court weighed in on an important aspect of workers’ compensation law: Co-employee liability. The results were not good for injured workers. Missouri Supreme Court Reverses Workers’ Compensation Award The case is Brock v. Dunne. What happened was pretty straightforward. Several manufacturing workers would feed a sheet of particle board into a machine. Rollers in the machine ...
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  • What are Survivor Benefits in Missouri?

    When a worker is hurt on the job, he or she is entitled to workers’ compensation. When the workplace accident was a fatal one, though, that compensation cannot go to the worker. Instead, it goes to his or her dependents in the form of survivor benefits. What are Survivor Benefits Under Missouri Workers’ Compensation Law? Survivor benefits are a type of workers’ compensation. They get paid to the ...
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