The Legal Intelligencer
By Michael W. Cardamone
July 19, 2006
As a Pennsylvania workers' compensation claimant's attorney, you litigate claim, termination, review, modification and suspension petitions on behalf of your client, the injured worker. However, the scope of your representation is much larger. You also counsel an injured worker and his family on all the relevant life issues that accompany a work injury claim.
In many cases, these seemingly extraneous issues can predominate the attorney-client relationship. Given society's increasingly volatile nature, financial stressors, and the commensurate marital strains, much of your time may be spent counseling your client to help him fend off collection actions, talking with a disgruntled spouse who may not understand the quirks of the workers' compensation system, or analyzing how a settlement may or may not be in the best interest of your client based upon his uncertain financial future.
Indeed, a work injury claim is a "substantial contributing factor" to a myriad of issues that are not addressed in the renowned workers' compensation practice and procedure book that many of us routinely rely upon as our "bible." However, as claimant's counsel, you had better address them if you want to keep your client - and a thriving practice.
Case in point: You represent John Doe. Doe cuts meat for a living. He is 60 years old and has cut meat since he was 20 years old. Doe loves his job. He makes a nice living cutting meat at $20 per hour. He has a wife and three kids. One day, Doe injures his wrist at work. After some haggling, he starts receiving workers' compensation benefits. Accordingly, Doe starts receiving two-thirds of his pre-injury average weekly wage, plus payment of his work-related medical treatment.
John's case should be fairly simple to handle, right? After all, his employer was kind enough to accept his claim without litigation. All you need to do is monitor his claim and wait for a petition to be filed, right?
Well, not exactly. Doe, like many other claimants, ends up losing his job and health benefits because he lost too much time from work. Doe, who was previously the breadwinner in his family, now receives just two-thirds of his regular pay. Rather than working and doing what he loved doing for four decades, Doe is sitting home not feeling the same fervor for life.
His wrist fusion surgery went well but has left him with a steel plate in his arm and ongoing pain and numbness in his wrist. He calls you to share his feelings of being overwhelmed. He wants to see another doctor and wants your feedback about getting back into the work force but does not know where to begin.
Doe develops depression as a result of being out of work for several months. He starts taking medications to fight his depression and this makes his stomach sick. He isn't sleeping well. His wife becomes increasingly aggravated with him because she now has to cut the lawn, do all the dishes, carry the groceries, and work extra hours to make up for Doe's lost income. His wife calls you because she wants to vent. She also has trouble understanding why Doe is not entitled to pain and suffering damages.
Doe's marriage becomes significantly strained. He develops heart problems related to the stress of not working and struggling with his marital relations. His blood pressure spikes. He opens up his mailbox one day and receives bills and collection notices for failing to pay for medical treatment that he thought was the workers' compensation carrier's obligation. This upsets him because he cannot fathom how the insurance company did not pay for what seems to be obvious work- related treatment just because the doctor's office did not send the bills on the proper forms. Afraid his already shaky credit may now be compromised further, Doe now makes a payment to the collection agency while his attorney works on ironing out the issue with the insurance company. Doe calls you to find out how to fend off the collections agency.
Doe's life has become increasingly difficult, which has significant ramifications for his family too. To exacerbate an already stressful situation, his workers' compensation checks start arriving on an erratic basis. He has now made several late mortgage payments and may lose his house. He feels like the world is crashing down on him. His wife is trying, but struggling to make up for his lost income. His kids are upset because he can no longer have a baseball catch with them or wrestle at night due to his wrist pain. Doe gains 15 pounds because he is not so active anymore. He feels like has aged five years in five months. Doe just wants to get back to work, get off his medications and feel productive again.
After six months, Doe is sent to a defense medical exam. The defense physician issues a report stating that he has fully recovered from his work-related wrist injury. A petition is filed and a hearing scheduled. Anxious to call Doe to talk about your strategy for defending the termination petition, Doe's focus is centered on the collection notice, his angry wife and his disgruntled kids.
Along with your answer denying the allegations in the termination petition, you contemplate filing a review petition - however, the review petition that you have in mind does not address the standard issue - the description of Doe's injury. Instead, you file a review stating: "Claimant respectfully requests that the caption in this case be amended to include his family as an aggrieved party."
At the outset of the attorney-client relationship, an injured worker signs your fee agreement granting you 20 percent of his wage loss benefits. However, in reality, you not only represent him but his immediate family as well. That is because the life of a workers' compensation recipient is rarely the glorious existence that many cynics like to believe. It is a life that often brings a chain of unfortunate and stressful events that heightens the stress level of the entire family.
The Pennsylvania Workers' Compensation Act is grounded on a humanitarian principle. But it does not grant a loss of consortium claim for afflicted family members. This is likely because the system is "no fault." While Doe's family may not have legal standing to assert a claim before the workers' compensation judge, they are very likely to penetrate the attorney-client relationship that you have with your claimant, and seek relief from you for their emotional distress.
As a representative of injured workers in Pennsylvania, you should be prepared to deal with these issues because you take your client and their family, as you find them - which is often times quite confused and stressed at the complexities of a work injury.
MICHAEL W. CARDAMONE is an associate at Krasno, Krasno & Onwudinjo in Philadelphia.
