| Pediatric Consultative Examination Reports |
| A medical professional who has been tapped by the Social Security Administration (SSA) to conduct a consultative examination of a child must include certain information in his report. The SSA mandates that the report containing an assessment of the child's history, examination, and any laboratory findings be consistent with the format for reporting results used for complete internal medicine examinations. The report must be thorough and complete in order to provide the SSA with the necessary information to determine the nature, duration, and severity of the child's impairment as well as the limitations that such impairment places on the child.More... |
| Third Party Defenses to Action |
| When a third party is sued for his role in causing an employee's injury, he may present various defenses. One such defense is the contributory negligence of the employee or his employer. If the employee shared in causing his injury, the contributory negligence defense could be wielded by the third party and be just as viable as with any other negligence action. When the employer is the employee's subrogee, the defense is as powerful against the employer. Further, in those jurisdictions adhering to the comparative negligence rule, the employer's recovery would be reduced by the amount of fault allocated to the employee. When an employer negligently contributes to the employee's recovery, it is generally held that the contributory negligent defense is ineffectual; as the employer is stepping into the shoes of the employees, its own negligence has no bearing on the "employee's" cause of action.More... |
| "Third Person" Entities |
| An employee who is injured during the course of his employment may, in addition to workers' compensation, seek damages in a third party action. Whether the employee of a subsidiary may sue the parent corporation, or vice versa, to recover damages for his injury is dependent on the jurisdiction. Though most often an affiliated corporation, such as a subsidiary or its parent, strives to maintain its independence from the other entity so as to be shielded by the corporate veil, in cases of worker injury such entities claim mutual identity to be protected from suit by the "employer's" immunity. In other words, if the injured employee works for the subsidiary, but files a third party action against the parent, the parent will argue that it stands in the shoes of the subsidiary as the employer and is thus immune from suit. This argument may very well work if the subsidiary is wholly owned and controlled by the parent.More... |
| Resident Employees Who Are Not On-Call |
| The general rule is that employees who reside on the employer's premises are protected by workers' compensation coverage if they are required to reside on the premises and are on-call twenty-four hours per day or the injury resulted from a risk associated with the employee's living conditions given the requisite living arrangement. When the employee is not on-call and has specified work hours, though he is required to live on the employer's premises, gaining workers' compensation benefits for an injury off the employer's premises is somewhat difficult. When the resident employee is injured outside his work hours and off the employer's premises, he must show a strong causal link between the injury and his employment. This causation requirement is magnified and must be found more compelling than the showing required for on-call employees. More... |
| Recovery of Costs, Attorney's Fees, and Interest in Workers' Compensation Actions |
| Generally, parties in workers' compensation actions are responsible for their own attorney's fees and costs. The amount of attorney's fees that can reasonably be charged to a claimant in pursuing his claim for benefits is specifically outlined in many state statutes. For example, some states will cap attorney's fees at a specified dollar amount; others will cap such fees at a designated percentage of the amount recovered as benefits by the claimant. More... |
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