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| Covered Injuries |
There are four types of injuries which workers compensation may cover:
- Traumatic physical injuries
- Repeated trauma injury
- Mental injuries
- Occupational disease
The vast majority of workers compensation claims are going to be characterized as a traumatic physical personal injury arising out of an accident
The next most common group of injuries are those cases of repeated trauma.
There is no actual striking or wounding of the body, but small harms occurring over a lengthy period of time. For example, if a worker is required to repetitively insert and pull out pieces of material from machinery thousands and tens of thousands of time over periods of days or weeks, that can result in repetitive injury to the arms, shoulder, neck and back. This puts excessive strain on the soft tissues involved, including muscles, ligaments and tendons.
Often employers in repeated trauma injuries will try to prove that the injury occurred as a result of activity outside of the work place. However, in cases of constant repeated motion at work or an injured worker did not have previous problems and gradually developed this problem while working.
The injured worker's treating doctor will likely be supportive.
In certain cases, doctors may have a difficult time identifying whether the job caused the impairment.
In most cases, workers' comp will cover injuries where it can be demonstrated that work accelerated the progression of an injury or aggravated a condition.
You can recover for mental affliction when it is associated with a physical injury. You may be overwhelmed by not being able to work, having bills stack up, having no source of income and hearing that it is going to take forever to get your workers' comp claim resolved.
In addition, one isolated event may be enough to cause enough mental stress to cause a problem. For example, if you saw a co-employee lose one of their limbs in a piece of machinery, that may be enough of a shock to prevent you from going back to work around that machinery.
Finally, in some states, you can collect workers' comp for extraordinary stress in the workplace resulting in mental injuries.
In some states, you can collect for specific occupational diseases, which are spelled out in statutes.
Some occupational diseases naturally flow from a particular occupation. To collect workers' comp, you'd have to demonstrate that these diseases wouldn't develop from ordinary life experiences. For example, you could prove that a large number of employees working in a particular field all developed a particular disease.
You don't have to prove to 100% certainty that your injury was related to the job, only that it's more probable than not.
Very often, a good caring physician will be able to connect the injury to the job. In many cases, it's important for your lawyer to explain the standard to your doctor. That way, your doctor won't fail to connect your injury to work because he wasn't able to rule out any other causes.
Don't worry if you find the doctors for your employer and insurance companies doctors willing to say just about anything for them. Ultimately, it'll be up to the insurance claims adjuster to decide the likely outcome at a hearing. Your doctor's opinion that the injury or condition is work related should be enough for you to succeed at collecting workers' comp benefits.
Kevin O'Keefe is a plaintiffs' attorney and the founder of Prairielaw.com.
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