Latest Workers' Compensation Headlines
All the headlines from our Workers' Compensation Topic Page, ordered by recency.
How Model for Preventing Workers’ Chronic Pain Claims Was Born
Apr 29 2016 // In response to rising chronic pain claims, Travelers announced the development of a new patent-pending predictive model designed to identify claims and workers most at risk. The company, which developed the Early Severity...
Florida Supreme Court Finds Attorney Fee Schedule Unconstitutional; Passes on Other Key Workers’ Comp Case
Apr 28 2016 // The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that the state’s mandatory attorneys’ fee schedule for workers’ compensation cases is unconstitutional under both Florida’s and the U.S. constitution as a...
Updated: Florida Supreme Court Declines Jurisdiction in Challenge to Workers’ Comp System
Apr 28 2016 // The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that it does not have jurisdiction in a case brought by an injured nurse that challenged the constitutionality of the entire Florida Workers’ Compensation system. In the case of...
CDI: Trucking Company Owners Cheated Workers’ Comp Carrier out of Millions
Apr 28 2016 // A pair of California trucking company owners were arrested for cheating their worker’s compensation insurer out of millions of dollars. Alvin Shin Chen, 54, and Fiona Xilin Chen, 46, both of La Cañada Flintridge,...
Texas Roofer Fined $80K for Repeated Workplace Hazards
Apr 28 2016 // Federal safety regulators have levied $80,280 in penalties against Quick Roofing LLC for repeatedly exposing workers to falls, ladder hazards and eye injuries. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) said...
Worker Falls into Vat; World’s Largest Sauerkraut Cannery Fined $143.5K
Apr 26 2016 // A Wisconsin food cannery faces $143,550 in federal penalties after a 35-year-old worker fell more than 17 feet into an empty sauerkraut vat and broke multiple bones. It marks the fourth time since 2011 that the U.S....
Swine Flu, Avian Flu, Ebola, the Zika Virus and Workers’ Compensation
Apr 25 2016 // Two tests must be satisfied before an illness or disease can be considered occupational and thus compensable under workers’ compensation: The illness or disease must be “occupational,” meaning that it...
OSHA Fines Storage Tank Company $95K for Missouri Workplace Hazards
Apr 22 2016 // A federal agency has found that a storage tank manufacturer is continuing to expose workers in Missouri to hazardous levels of a chemical than can cause lung cancer and other health problems. The Occupational Safety and...
Employers Pay As 32% of Opioid Prescriptions Are Abused: Report
Apr 21 2016 // Nearly one out of every three (32 percent) opioid prescriptions, which are subsidized by America’s employers, is being abused, according to a report by a healthcare data and technology company. San Francisco-based...
OSHA: 3 in South Central States Killed when Riding Mowers Overturn
Apr 21 2016 // In the past month, three landscape company employees have died in Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas when riding mowers or tractors overturned into water or a stream bed — equaling the total in the previous six years, a...
Massachusetts Workers’ Comp Rates to Rise an Average of 1.5%
Apr 20 2016 // Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker’s administration announced Wednesday that the state’s workers’ compensation rates will rise an average 1.5 percent beginning July 1. Officials said this nominal increase...
MarketScout Expands Workers’ Compensation Division with Atlanta Hire
Apr 20 2016 // MarketScout, the national electronic insurance exchange and specialty MGA headquartered in Dallas, has expanded its Workers’ Compensation division by adding three insurance professionals in San Francisco, Las Vegas...
California Workers’ Comp Committee Votes for Lower Mid-Year Filing
Apr 18 2016 // The governing committee of the California Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau voted unanimously in early April to authorize the WCIRB to submit a mid-year pure premium rate reduction filing to the...
Maryland’s Chesapeake to Phase in NCCI Rates in 2020
Apr 18 2016 // Chesapeake Employers’ Insurance Company, Maryland’s largest writer of workers’ compensation insurance, announced its plan to phase in the National Council on Compensation Insurance’s (NCCI) rating...
Workers’ Comp Costs to Decline in Arkansas
Apr 18 2016 // The state’s top insurance regulator has approved a decrease in workers’ compensation rates in Arkansas. Effective July 1, the overall loss cost in the voluntary market will decline by 4.3 percent and the...
Injured Ohio Workers Receiving Fewer Opioid Prescriptions
Apr 18 2016 // The amount of opioids prescribed to injured Ohio workers has fallen significantly since the state’s insurance fund for injured workers created a pharmacy management program amid concerns about painkiller usage. Fewer...
RIMS 2016: Star Trek Tools, Workers Comp’s Future Help Draw Biggest Crowd in 13 Years
Apr 15 2016 // Workers’ compensation, geopolitical risks, recalls, disaster response, the captive industry and cyber security were among the topics of sessions held throughout the final day of the annual RIMS conference for risk...
5 Accused in California of More than $635K in Tax, Insurance Fraud
Apr 15 2016 // Five defendants have been arraigned in California for committing over $635,000 in tax and insurance fraud and failing to pay employees prevailing wage on public works contracts, the California Department of Industrial...
Another Provision of Oklahoma Workers’ Comp Law Struck Down
Apr 14 2016 // The Oklahoma Supreme Court on April 12 struck down part of the state’s workers’ compensation law, saying the provisions deprived workers of their due process rights and created a subclass of workers. The 7-2...
California Workers’ Comp Board Chairwoman Caplane to Retire
Apr 13 2016 // Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board Chairwoman Ronnie Caplane is retiring from state service at the end of the month, it was announced. Caplane was appointed commissioner in 2003 by Gov. Gray Davis, reappointed in...
