Cases dealing with benefits stopping in PA workers’ compensation, due an alleged “retirement” of the injured worker, are frequent on our blog. Usually, Pennsylvania Courts are reading the PA Workers’ Compensation Act ever more strictly. A recent case, however, gives hope to the injured worker in Pennsylvania. In Keene v.…
In Pennsylvania workers’ compensation matters, a workers’ comp insurance carrier can only get a “Termination” of benefits when the injured worker is “fully recovered” from his or her injury. This sounds like, and should be, a difficult standard for the insurance carrier to meet. Unfortunately, as happens too often in…
We have already mentioned on a past blog entry that injured workers in Pennsylvania can collect PA workers’ compensation benefits and Social Security Disability benefits at the same time. However, a recent opinion from the United States Tax Court, reported on LawyersUSAOnline.com, reminds us that the receipt of the two…
On many occasions over the years, we have addressed the Utilization Review (UR) process in Pennsylvania workers’ compensation cases. This is the process either party, usually the workers’ comp insurance carrier, uses to obtain a determination as to whether a treatment at issue is “reasonable and necessary” such that the…
While the Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Act generally precludes an injured worker in PA from suing his or her employer, the injured worker does have the ability to sue a third party, if that party is responsible for the injury. Since workers’ compensation in PA does not provide any payment for…
As noted in a previous blog posting, Glenn C. Neiman, a partner at Brilliant & Neiman LLC, joined the prestigious faculty of Lawline.com in 2008. It was recently announced that his next seminar for Lawline.com will be on changing the description of injury in PA workers’ compensation, a topic which…
Utilization Review is the proper course of action when either party in a PA workers’ compensation case questions whether medical treatment is reasonable and necessary. We have discussed this process in a previous blog entry. Since the Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Act is remedial legislation, intended by its creators to provide…
The Allentown Workers’ Compensation Hearing Office has been located at 160 Hamilton Street, in Allentown, for several years now. We have just been advised by one of the Workers’ Compensation Judges (WCJ) at that office that the hearing location for Allentown will be moving shortly. The plan is for the…
Previously, we posted a blog entry on the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania decision in Phoenixville Hospital v. Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board (Shoap). This was the decision where the Commonwealth Court was unmoved when the injured worker applied for every job in a Labor Market Survey and found none available to…
The issue of “retirement” and “voluntary withdrawal from the labor market” is one we see often in Pennsylvania workers’ compensation. We have had blog entries on how applying for Social Security Retirement benefits can impact the receipt of PA workers’ comp benefits, and how receipt of pension benefits can have…