By: The Workers' Compensation Team
Long-term opioid abuse has become a front page issue throughout the country, as doctors, claimants, insurance companies, and employers struggle with the drastic increase in opioid prescriptions in recent years and the potentially disastrous effects of these medications. A quick glance at recent statistics is alarming, as there have been 4,400 deaths in Virginia linked to opioids since 2007.
By: Samantha S. Otero, Of Counsel, Business Law Practice Group
The new minimum salary level for exempt employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) will be $913 per week, or $47,476 per year, under final regulations that will be released on Wednesday, May 18, 2016, by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL).
By: Michael H. Gladstone, Director, Litigation Practice Group
Actions in litigation ought to be, and these days are, regularly tested by insurers, TPAs and direct hire corporate clients under a cost/benefit analysis. A proposed action or tactic must justify itself to be client approved. Not all pleas, motions or expert hires turn out as hoped, but there must be some prospect of substantive return on the lawyer, client and witness/consultant investment to warrant going forward. I recently observed an attorney in a protracted civil litigation matter take actions which neither I, nor any of my clients, would have approved. No beneficial result was achieved by the actions, except only an increase in attorney work for all involved in the case.
By: The Workers’ Compensation Practice Group
There has been a lot of discussion recently regarding the Commission’s ability to infer facts, particularly from the standpoint of the initial compensability of a claim. From the defense perspective, the willingness of the Commission to infer facts to support causation/compensability has been a cause for concern. Recently, the Court of Appeals addressed a Full Commission finding that the claimant’s injury arose out of his employment, based on an inference made by the Full Commission, in the case of United Airlines, Inc. v. Bryan Andrew Taylor, an unpublished Opinion.
By: The Workers' Compensation Practice Group
On December 15, 2015, the Full Commission released its Opinion in Stiltner v. Pike Electric, JCN VA00001006840 (December 15, 2015), clarifying one of the exceptions to the coming and going rule. It is well-established that an accidental injury sustained when an employee is going to or leaving from his or her place of employment has not occurred in the course of the employment and is not therefore compensable.
By The Workers' Compensation Practice Group
The simple fact that a partially-disabled claimant has lost his job through no fault of his own does not mean the claimant is automatically entitled to disability benefits. As a general principle, “loss of employment should not be deemed due to disability if a worker without the disability would lose employment or suffer a reduction in earnings under the same economic conditions.” King William County v. Jones, No. 0576-15-2, 2015 Va. App. LEXIS 353, at *20 (Dec. 1, 2015). Instead, in order to receive benefits upon the loss of employment, the partially-disabled claimant must demonstrate “the wage loss is causally related to the partial incapacity.” Id. at 23.
By: The Workers' Compensation Practice Group
In Virginia, a finding that a claimant’s injury was caused by his or her own willful misconduct bars the claimant’s entitlement to benefits under the Workers’ Compensation Act. If you tuned in for our June 2014 E-Blast, you may remember the case of Layne v. Crist, JCN No. VA02000002019 (May 20, 2014), in which the Full Commission took note of the conflicting case law surrounding the requirements of proving that the claimant’s injury was caused by his or her own willful misconduct.
By: The Workers' Compensation Practice Group
When negotiating settlements and planning for future exposure in a claim, one issue to remain constantly aware of is the potential role that a Medicare Set-Aside (MSA) may play in your claim. We must take Medicare’s interest into account in every workers’ compensation settlement. Therefore, it is important to understand what a Medicare Set-Aside is, when you might need one, and what effect it can have on the handling of a claim.
By: The Workers' Compensation Team
A workers’ compensation claimant cannot be terminated merely for filing a workers’ compensation claim. However, an employer may terminate a claimant as long as it is not in retaliation for the filing of a workers’ compensation claim but rather based on misconduct that is unrelated to the workers’ compensation claim.
The Virginia Court of Appeals has held that an employee who is terminated for cause and for reasons not concerning his disability is not entitled to receive compensation benefits. Artis v. Ottenberg’s Bakers, Inc., 45 Va. App. 72, 84, 608 S.E.2d. 512, 517 (2005)(en banc). This is because, “any subsequent wage loss is properly attributable to his wrongful act rather than his
