Legislation being hailed for allowing faster workers' compensation claims settlements was signed into law last week by Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf. It changes the requirements regarding the signing of legal paperwork for those workers eligible for a C&R â€" a Compromise and Release settlement.

From whether COVID-19 is reimbursable to developments in medical marijuana's compensability, it has been a busy year for workers' comp decisions at both the state and federal level.

No employer wants to find themselves in the midst of a workers compensation matter, especially when the employee in question was injured through no fault of the employer.

This problem starts with California's notoriously employee-friendly workers compensation rules, which requires employers to pay for employees' medical treatment if they are hurt on the job. This holds true even in cases where the employer is not at fault and injuries were caused by a negligent third party.

Fortunately, California also gives businesses or their workers compensation carriers the right to subrogate against those negligent third parties to recover any benefits they might have paid to injured workers. Through additional litigation, employers can seek reimbursement for these paid benefits that were made on behalf of an injured employee.

Harris County Fire Marshal's officials are investigating an overnight fire at the ExxonMobil's Baytown refinery that left four people injured.

Finally, life felt normal again. No video conferences. No remote meetings. Just a smattering of masks. This year for the Workers' Compensation Institute in Orlando, their behemoth of an educational conference rose like a Phoenix from the desolate ashes of a detested pandemic

For Tyler Wright, sheriff's deputy with Florida Law Enforcement, the anxiety and flashbacks that came with PTSD were becoming unbearable.

For years experts have been talking about the "gray tsunami" that threatened the workers' compensation industry. The crushing wave said to be coming was not one of earth temblors and overwhelming waves, but rather a current of retirement from an aging and long-entrenched workforce

While the traditional view of claims is that it sits towards the back of the value chain, that is changing, a speaker said Wednesday during KPMG's 30th annual insurance conference. The evolving role of claims was one of four macro (or high-level) trends discussed during the Reimagining Operations session at the virtual conference.

In his 2015 stand-up special The Comeback Kid, stand-up comedian John Mulaney joked that the government had '[become] like cool parents' when it came to marijuana. It's a claim many an onlooker would agree with.

The death of an employee is certainly a difficult matter for an employer, even when the employee's death happened away from the workplace and was in no way related to work.

This past year, millions of claims professionals retired, forcing companies to step up to attract the next generation.

A valiant effort by a California workers' compensation carrier to make it more difficult for an employee to argue employer fault and settle around a workers' compensation carrier's statutory lien and right of reimbursement fell on deaf ears recently, when the California Court of Appeals rejected the notion that the workers' compensation carrier has adequate standing to challenge . . .

It's the question every claims professional and trial attorney claims to know but few fully understand.

The annual conference put on by the National Workers' Compensation Defense Network (NWCDN) is scheduled for November 10, 2021.

More than 40 million Americans have been diagnosed with Covid-19, and research suggests that between a quarter to a third of them will develop long-haul Covid, a mysterious illness characterized by persistent symptoms that include severe fatigue, cognitive impairment, and respiratory problems that may leave more than 20% of patients unable to return to work.