Under the Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Act, as that set of laws has been interpreted by Courts in Pennsylvania, there has been some confusion regarding when an injured worker can be reinstated to total disability workers’ compensation benefits. For example, an injured worker who returns to light duty work with the…
A work injury is covered by the Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Act when the injury takes place in PA. However, even when a work injury occurs outside Pennsylvania, there are times PA has “jurisdiction” to hear the case. One of those situations when PA workers’ comp laws can apply to a…
Before Labor Market Surveys (LMS)/Earning Power Assessments (EPA), workers’ comp insurance carriers in PA used to actually have to prove a specific job was available to an injured worker in order to modify or suspend workers’ compensation benefits. This changed in the 1996 amendments to the Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Act,…
In an earlier blog entry, we discussed the 2009 decision by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in Cinram Manufacturing v. Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board (Hill). This case discussed the procedure for amending a Notice of Compensation Payable (NCP). The Court, in Cinram, decided that a “corrective amendment” (a condition which…
Some time ago, we made a brief deviation from our normal course of not blogging about own active cases, to discuss a liquor store clerk who was robbed at gunpoint. The PA Liquor Control Board (LCB) denied the claim, stating that being robbed at gunpoint was not an “abnormal working…
**Update – Appeal accepted by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania on April 27, 2011 – Stay tuned for more details** Years ago, before the 1996 amendments to the Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Act (Known as Act 57), a workers’ comp insurance company in PA had to prove that work was actually…
In a previous blog posting, we discussed the case of Armstrong v. Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board, decided by the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania in 2007. This case first allowed a PA workers’ compensation insurance carrier to use a Notice of Denial (NCD) to “accept” a workers’ comp case. As attorneys…
As we have discussed in several previous blog entries, an injury at work in PA must happen in the scope and course of employment to be compensable under the Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Act. Often, this is the issue in dispute when an employee is injured in a parking lot, either…
While there is no minimum time a worker must be employed before the worker qualifies for workers’ compensation coverage in Pennsylvania, the worker must actually be “employed” at the time of the injury. This means there must be both an offer and an acceptance of employment, before the work injury…
As we have discussed in a previous blog entry, the PA Workers’ Compensation Act requires that a Notice of Ability to Return to Work be served on an injured worker (and his or her attorney), before the workers’ comp insurance carrier can move to modify or suspend benefits. Specifically, the…