Commissioner Thompson Passes

Hon. Clifton Thompson who was actively serving the citizens of the State of Connecticut as a Worker's Compensation Commissioner passed away on Friday, May 18th, 2004. At the time of his death, Commissioner Thompson was hearing cases in the Second and Sixth Districts. Commissioner Thompson will be remembered by me as a true gentleman. Although a recent appointee and newcomer to worker's compensation law, Commissioner Thompson dove right in and effectively handled cases in a fair and compassionate manner. I will truly miss him. Our firm's sympathies go out to his wife and family.

SSA Bans Judges from Stalking Facebook

I read today that apparently the Social Security Administration has banned its' Administrative Law Judges from using Facebook in particular and the internet in general to root out Claimant fraud. I have often suspected ALJ's dig around in he online world to discover whether or not the Claimants that appear before them can be found dancing or running or in general having some sort of life when they are not in the hearing room. All in all, I believe the SSA's new policy is the only fair way to handle things. There is all sorts of ways online sites and web pages can be manipulated so that things are not as they appear. Let's keep decisions based on testable evidence duly admitted in the hearing room and not based on someone's Facebook or Twitter page.

Worker's Comp Commission/Labor Department merger shelved for this year- Middletown District Office to Close

We have received some good news from about the Governor’s proposal to consolidate the Worker’s Compensation Commission into the Department of Labor. In the latest version of the proposed state budget, funding for the WCC has been restored. The WCC will remain independent. There is some bad news, but it is not unexpected: the Middletown office will close as of July 1 and 2 vacant positions will be eliminated

Bulletin 49 now available

The Workers’ Compensation Commission’s Bulletin 49 is available to the public free of charge, and contains the entire Workers’ Compensation Act, additional related statutes, and Workers’ Compensation Administrative Regulations. Also included are illustrations of Connecticut’s workers’ compensation forms.

To receive a copy of the Bulletin 49, please contact either your nearest Workers’ Compensation Commission District Office or the Commission’s Education Services [(860) 493-1500].

The 11 Most Life Threatening Jobs on the Planet

The danger workers face on the job is not always compensated by higher pay. Life-threatening jobs can be mind-numbingly simple, easily performed by unskilled workers or children, or as physically and mentally demanding as one can imagine. Cable television shows like Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Truckers give some sense of the dangers faced by workers in the sea fishing and truck driving industries respectively, while films like Workingman's Death (2005) document examples of dangerous, and almost pointlessly unproductive manual labor. Below are 11 life-threatening jobs ranging from the banal to the bizarre.

Street Sweeper (Rwanda)

The most humble of jobs can be the most dangerous. On the streets of Kigali province, in the country of Rwanda, women dressed in blue work from dawn to dusk sweeping the roads and highways. Drivers, going several miles per hour, zoom past, their cars missing the street-sweeping women by just inches. The women wear no reflective clothing, and there are no cautionary signs or pylons alerting drivers of the presence of these women on the road. In a country with 30% unemployment, street sweeping, which pays approximately $3 a day, is a sought-after job.
King Crab Fisherman (Alaska, United States)

More dramatic than street sweeping, crab fishing in the Bering Sea is one of the world's most dangerous professions. The fishing takes place night and day in rough waters that constantly and violently rock the boats, sending high waves crashing over the decks. Fishermen can slip on the soaked deck, get hit by flying objects, or fall overboard into freezing water. In the 1990s, the Alaskan fishing industry experienced 400 deaths per 100,000 employees. That number has increased since.
Sulfur Miner (East Java, Indonesia)

Java's sulfur miners gather chunks of yellow sulfur located next to a steaming, acidic volcano crater lake. The men hold their breaths and run into the clouds of hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide, gases that burn the eyes and throat, and grab as much sulfur as they can carry before returning to relative safety away from the lake. The miners gag, choke, and spit before repeating the process again and again. The sulfur they gather is used to bleach sugar, make matches, and vulcanize rubber. The miners are paid $10 to $15 a day, with some extra income coming from posing for photographs taken by curious tourists well away from the poisonous gas. Gloves and gas masks are unaffordable luxury items.
Police Office (Kabul, Afghanistan)

As recently as December 2011, police officers and police stations in war-torn Kabul, Afghanistan, have been targeted by the Taliban soldiers and suicide bombers. CBS News reports that every day, five out of 10 Kabul police officers die on the job. Lack of training and high-tech tools, as well as government-level corruption and an economy based on the heroin trade, prevent Kabul's police force from performing their job with any degree of safety or effectiveness.
E-Waste Recycler (Guiyu, China)

Old discarded electronics, including laptops, home entertainment systems, and smart phones, are exported to Guiyu's electronic waste sites to be gathered and broken down, by hand, for scrap metal by thousands of low-paid workers and their children. The electronics release toxic metals and chemicals into the workers and the environment, poisoning families and their environment. The amount of e-waste on the planet is increasing at an alarming rate, mostly in developing countries, with illegal exporting and dumping contributing to the glut of toxic electronics.
Truck Driver (United States)

Driving a truck is one of the most dangerous jobs in the United States. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration reports that truck drivers are "more likely to die in a work-related accident than the average worker," with highway accidents accounting for the majority of those deaths. Most accidents occur because of unsafe actions by drivers of passenger vehicles who, being unfamiliar with large vehicles, ignore the cautionary signage displayed on trucks.

Crocodile Wrestler (Nakhon Pathom Province, Thailand)

The Samphran Elephant Ground and Zoo has been a popular tourist destination since 1985, featuring choreographed performances by elephants, a garden of orchids, and a huge collection of specially bred crocodiles. At the zoo, tourists can enjoy watching crocodile wrestlers happily stick their heads inside the jaws of large crocodiles after first beating them with sticks and dragging them around by their tails. Tourists can also elect to say "no" to this display of animal cruelty and take their business to Thailand's much more humanely run Elephant Nature Park.
Construction Laborer (United States)

How dangerous is construction work? According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, construction boasts a work-related death rate of 18 people per 100,000. Construction companies, when they're not taking advantage of undocumented workers or non-unionized workers, generally pay well. But the jobs often require workers to navigate dangerous environments, including underground, great heights, and busy highways. Hazardous materials, including heavy machinery, power tools, and explosives increase the hazardous risks of the job.
Sanitation Workers (United States)

In recent years, better training and improved safety equipment, including more visible outer clothing, have helped to make the still-dangerous job of sanitation workers a little bit safer. But many dangers will always be just part of the job. While collecting sanitation, workers can be struck and killed by passing automobiles, injured by improperly disposed-of hazardous waste, or crushed by the truck's machinery. Garbage is often collected late at night or early in the morning. The resulting fatigue can impair a sanitation worker's judgment and reaction time, creating the potential for accidents.
Coal Miner (Ukraine)

Ukrainian coal mining is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, with a work-related death rate 100 times higher than that of coal miners in the United States. In addition to unsafe, yet-to-be modernized mines, owned by billionaires who sell coal well below market rates and are unconcerned about worker safety, there are illegal pits employing freelance miners to dig for coal in near-empty mine shafts. "Our enthusiasm comes from our will to survive," says one Ukrainian miner. "If you don't work, you'll freeze to death."
Farmer (United States)

The farming industry is not immune to work-related injuries and deaths. Injuries sustained from charging livestock and tractor rollovers are common. There are instances of farmers falling into grain bins and suffocating as they're smothered in the grain. And at contained feeding operations, gases, dust, and other irritants from decomposing manure have a toxic effect on the long-term health of farm workers. The dangers to workers in the farming industry are in the news recently, as the U.S. Labor Department moves to approve new rules for children working in agriculture. Fatalities for teenage farm workers are four times higher than those in non-farm industries, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

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Worker's Compensation and "Acts of God"

From Lynch Ryan: Worker's Comp Insider

Annals of Compensability: Of Heroes, Acts of God, and (No) Mercy
When the category 5 hurricane hit Joplin, Missouri on May 22 this year, Mark Lindquist was perched on a mattress which covered his clients, three mentally disabled adults. Lindquist, a social worker for Community Support Services, was following the tornado protocol in a town where basements are virtually non-existent. Unfortunately, the protocol proved utterly ineffective in the wake of 200 mile per hour winds. Lindquist was plucked from his perch and hurled a block away. He was impaled on debris, with every rib broken, his shoulder destroyed and most of his teeth knocked out. He was put into a coma for about two months, nearly dying from Zyomycosis, a rare fungal infection that killed 5 other victims. And to top things off, his three clients perished in the storm.
Lindquist's survival is well beyond the expectations of his doctors. His right arm remains in a sling, but he has use of the hand. An eye that was temporarily blinded has full sight. He moves slowly and has short-term memory loss, but is able to speak clearly.
A Hole in the Safety Net?Lindquist assumed that workers comp insurance would cover his medical costs (a whopping $2.5 million), pay for his 12 daily meds and provide indemnity for his lost wages. (As a low wage worker, Linquist could not afford health insurance.) His assumption of coverage has proved naive. He certainly was "in the course and scope of employment." However, under Missouri law, Acts of God are only covered by workers comp if work exposes the individual to unusual risk. If, on the other hand, there was no greater risk for Lindquist than that facing the general public at the time of the tornado, the injury is not compensable. Lindquist was working - heroically - but the work itself did not cause the injuries. His claim has been denied.
End of story? Not quite. Certainly a case can and will be made that by lying on top of a mattress, in that particular location, Lindquist was more exposed to harm than the general public. He will be able to show that had he not been working, he might have been able to drive his van out of harm's way. Given the high profile of his claim, he is likely to prevail at some point in the process.
It's worth noting that of 132 comp claims filed in the tornado's aftermath, only 8 have been denied. It may have been an Act of God, but somewhere along the line there will be an act of mercy to help a courageous worker rebuild his shattered life from the ground up.
Thanks to Mark Walls and his Workers Comp Analysis Group for the heads up on this story.

Tough Month at the CRB

A flurry of recent decisions have just come down from the Connecticut Compensation Review Board on a Myriad of issues, big and small. Not a single win for a Claimant.

This is a tough enviornment in which to represent an injured worker in Connecticut. be sure you have and experienced Connecticut Worker's Compensation Lawyer on your case to help you understand your options and receive the best possible advice.