The Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Act sets forth that medical treatment related to a work injury is to be paid for by the workers’ comp insurance carrier (provided the treatment is reasonable and necessary). If there is a dispute as to whether treatment is related to a work injury, a petition…
Complicated fact patterns tend to make for complicated blog entries. A recent decision by the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania in McNeil v. Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board (Department of Corrections, SCI-Graterford) is one of these situations, but is valuable for the lessons contained within. In that case the injured worker (“Claimant”)…
Of course, no injured worker is trying to lose his or her Pennsylvania workers’ compensation benefits. But, not being properly advised by an attorney who is certified as a specialist in PA workers’ compensation law can lead to that very result. Take the cautionary tale of Mr. Torijano, a plumber’s…
On our website, we have discussed the various types of benefits available under the Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Act (Act). One of these types of benefits is known as “specific loss.” This is the type of benefit available when a worker loses the use of a body part for “all practice…
We have discussed Section 204(a) of the Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Act (Act) on this blog in the past. This is the provision of the Act that provides a credit to the workers’ comp insurance carrier for certain other benefits an injured worker might receive, such as pension, social security retirement,…
One of the more disputed areas of workers’ compensation in PA, and therefore the source of many appellate decisions, is whether an employee is injured in the scope and course of his or her employment. We have addressed scope and course of employment many times on this blog. Recently, another…
We have discussed the Notice of Temporary Compensation Payable (NTCP or TNCP) on this blog in the past. This is a tool a Pennsylvania workers’ compensation insurance carrier can use if it is still investigating and unsure whether to formally accept liability for a work injury in PA (instead of…
We have written volumes about the Impairment Rating Evaluation (IRE) process. It would now appear all of those words just became moot with the decision rendered by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, which ruled the entire IRE provision to be unconstitutional. Back in September of 2015, we talked about the…
On this blog we often discuss the beginning and ending of a workers’ compensation case in Pennsylvania. This is a natural, and obvious, area of litigation. However, there is also potential for dispute, and thus, litigation, when an injured worker goes back to work. This is especially true where the…
Since the Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Act covers “employees,” but not “independent contractors,” the relationship between these two terms is something we have previously discussed on our blog. A recent case from the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania on this topic featured an added twist of a late answer. In Hawbaker v.…