One of the most unfair aspects of Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation has always been how injured workers must defend petitions which address only medical benefits. While injured workers receiving total disability benefits can easily retain an attorney (paying a portion, usually 20%, of such benefits as the fee), injured workers who…
Back in July, 2019, we blogged, unhappily, about the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania decision in Peters v. Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board (Cintas Corporation). This decision found a traveling employee to not be in the scope and course of his employment when he was injured in a motor vehicle accident after…
One frequently litigated part of PA workers’ compensation law is whether an injured worker is within the “scope and course” of his or her employment at the time of the injury. Often, this question is dealing with a situation where an employee is injured just before or after his or…
Most employees in PA are covered by the Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Act. This is a topic that has been mentioned previously in this blog. However, that thought begs the question – who is actually an “employee”? This can be a complicated topic and analysis, where one must differentiate the “employee”…
As we have discussed in the past, the assessment of unreasonable contest attorney fees is a rare finding in PA workers’ compensation. This is when the workers’ comp insurance carrier is ordered to pay the fees of the injured worker’s attorney. Even on those unusual occasions when a Workers’ Compensation…
Back in 2017, we shared the exciting news (hey, we attorneys have a unique sense of excitement!) that the entire Impairment Rating Evaluation (IRE) section of the Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Act (Act) was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of PA (The Protz case) and stricken from the Act. This,…
Once an injured worker in Pennsylvania establishes an entitlement to workers’ compensation benefits (when out of work, the benefits are known as “temporary total disability benefits” or TTD), the workers’ comp insurance carrier cannot just stop paying the benefits at its discretion. This is one of the advantages of the…
This blog does not address Coronavirus (COVID-19) and how it relates to PA workers’ compensation. Which is good, because I think we are all tired of seeing the words “Coronavirus” or “COVID-19.” Instead, we are looking at a recent decision from the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, wherein the Court looked…
Usually, if the testimony of an injured worker, and that of the medical expert offered by the injured worker, is not found credible by the Workers’ Compensation Judge (WCJ), there is no way to win the case. This highlights just how important it is to have a “presumption” under the…
One of the important aspects to the Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Act (“Act”) is Section 309, which deals with the calculation of the Average Weekly Wage (AWW), controlling the amount of benefits an injured worker in PA will receive. We have discussed these calculations in previous blog posts. Additionally, the concept…