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…
Pennsylvania Workers' Compensation Lawyer Blog
PA Workers’ Comp Judge Agrees Armed Robbery is “Abnormal Working Condition” in Pennsylvania; Employer Appeals
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…
Acupuncture Served As a Fatigue And Pain Treatment
We are pleased to present a guest blog post from http://www.metropolitanmds.com regarding the use of acupuncture. We thought this may be of benefit to injured workers, who may be interested in exploring alternative areas for pain relief: Acupuncture is one of the oldest forms of health care and treatments on…
Jobs Need Not Be Available For Modification in PA Workers’ Comp
**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…
Notice of Denial Accepts Case in PA Workers’ Comp
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…
Employee Injured in Employer’s Parking Lot Entitled to PA Workers’ Comp
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…
Worker Injured in Pre-Employment Screening Not an “Employee” at Time of Injury; PA Workers’ Compensation Benefits Denied
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…
Trauma a Cause of “Water on the Knee”
“Water on the knee” is one of those phrases we hear that harkens back to years ago, like lumbago (low back pain) or causalgia (Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy (RSD); now also known as Chronic Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS)). Simply put, “water on the knee” is swelling (also called “effusion”) of the…
Notice of Ability to Work in PA Workers’ Comp is “Prompt” Two Months Late
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…
New PA Workers’ Compensation Judges Announced
As discussed in a previous blog entry, PA workers’ compensation proceedings are usually held in the County in which the injured worker resides. Counties are then grouped by “Districts.” In the State of PA, there are four Districts: Eastern, Southeastern, Central and Western. Hearings for the Eastern District are located…