We have discussed the Uninsured Employers Guaranty Fund (UEGF) on this blog before. This is the Fund that was created in 2007 to provide benefits to injured workers when an employer fails to carry Pennsylvania workers’ compensation insurance (in direct violation of PA law). Though the UEGF has now been…
Unless you have been living under a rock, you are aware the Pope will be visiting Philadelphia late this September. With the throngs of people flooding Philadelphia for the festivities, the Pennsylvania Bureau of Workers’ Compensation realized that some adjustments to their scheduling will have to take place. As such,…
One of the basic concepts of a workers’ compensation case in Pennsylvania, is that the injured worker actually be an employee. A person truly working as an “independent contractor” is not covered by the Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Act (Act). How someone becomes an “independent contractor,” at least for PA workers’…
Since coming into the Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Act (Act) in the 1996 amendments, the Impairment Rating Evaluation (IRE) is here to stay. This is an important tool available to the workers’ comp insurance carriers in PA, and can be used to contain exposure on a file. An entire page devoted…
As a general rule, once workers’ compensation benefits are awarded to an injured worker in Pennsylvania, the insurance carrier cannot stop paying those benefits without permission from either the injured worker (signing a document such as a Supplemental Agreement or a Final Receipt) or from a Workers’ Compensation Judge (WCJ).…
Sometimes the issue is a workers’ compensation case in Pennsylvania is a very straightforward one. For example, is interest on past due workers’ compensation benefits in PA to be calculated using simple interest or compound interest? This was the issue faced by the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania in Tobler v.…
One of the more common areas of the Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Act (Act) seen in appellate cases is the issue of whether an injured worker was in the scope and course of his or her employment at the time of the injury. This is often a very fact-specific inquiry. Recently,…
Once PA workers’ compensation benefits are modified or suspended, such as by the injured worker resuming gainful employment, the injured worker has at least 500 weeks within which he or she can reinstate total disability benefits (if the disability related to the injury recurs). If the benefits had been modified…
******************REVERSED BY SUPREME COURT OF PENNSYLVANIA – SEE BLOG ENTRY 1/20/17******************** One of the big changes to the Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Act in the overhaul of 1996 was the introduction of the Impairment Rating Evaluation (IRE). This has become such a significant part of the Act that our website has…
We rarely discuss Pennsylvania appellate cases other than those directly involving workers’ compensation. However, a recent unemployment compensation case touches on the workers’ compensation process, and may be of interest to our readers. The case is Paolucci v. Unemployment Compensation Board of Review, recently decided by the Commonwealth Court of…