workers compensation doctors near me

The "what I wanna be" thought came to me when I read a recent California decision regarding exclusive remedy. Exclusive remedy is one of the quid pro quo of workers' compensation in America. The idea of workers' compensation is that an injured worker will receive a more rapid and more certain treatment, income replacement, and hopefully recovery through this alternative to tort litigation and damages. Like it or not, elect it or not, when you go to work in most states you agree to accept workers' compensation as a substitute for tort damages. A potential result is that many maladies, injuries and conditions are covered and treated in workers' compensation, without the risks and challenges of the tort system. A recent Florida jury verdict illustrates that. A man in St. Lucie County was apparently drinking and listening to music in his garage. When police were summoned for the noise, they say that this man had a gun in his hand when he suggested they leave him alone. There is dispute about that gun-in-hand accusation.

But, there seems no disagreement that he had been drinking and was perhaps even impaired. He allegedly shut the door in the police officer's faces to return to his music. An officer shot three or four times through the door. The man was later found dead inside with an unloaded pistol in his pocket. The tort system can be unpredictable. The news will conjecture and opine on why the jury reached that decision, but the fact is that is the decision. No appellate court can figure out how or why a jury does what it does, but comp judges have to "show their work" in decisions and appellate courts can calculate and recalculate benefits under statutory provisions. Certainly, tort damages may be more lucrative than workers' compensation. Most workers' compensation does not really compensate for family impacts (loss of consortium), or non-tangible (pain and suffering), or even behavior correcting (punitive) damages.

But, tort damages are also harder to predict (see above), and getting a case to trial in civil courts can take years. And, if you are suing the state, you may find that damages are limited by something called "sovereign immunity." It protects many states. Workers' compensation benefits may have category limitations, but there is no such overarching cap. Workers' compensation benefits are admittedly not usually as significant as tort damages, but they are usually delivered much more rapidly, most of the time without any litigation whatever. A Florida state database reflects that between January 1, 2017 through December 31, 2017 there were 54,143 "lost time" accidents in Florida. During the same period only 30,448 new cases entered litigation in Florida workers' compensation. That means, ignoring all the "medical only" and "first aid" injuries that occurred, at most only about 56% of claims entered litigation. That comparison is an illustration.

It is a flawed illustration because many claims that are "new" to the litigation process are not related to dates of accident in the year they occur (date of accident year), but are filed later. But, conceding that flaw, and acknowledging that many injuries are not "lost time," a large amount of injured workers appear to receive benefits without even resorting to litigation. Certainly, that might also occur in the tort system (claim or allegation that is settled in a lump-sum without trial). But workers' compensation appears to deliver on the "more certain" and "more rapid" promises. And, workers' compensation is not eliminated or reduced if the worker is him or herself negligent (comparative negligence). Which returns me to what you wanted to be when you grow up, and the California case of Gund v. County of Trinity. A deputy received a dispatch that resulted from a 911 call. The caller whispered she needed help, and the 911 operator could not reestablish contact when the call was interrupted.

So the deputy did what any law enforcement officer would, he placed a call to the caller's neighbors and asked them to look in on the caller (sarcasm). Some police agency employees might instead have driven to the house and checked on the citizen him or herself. This officer told the Gunds that he was "hours away," however. Googlemaps says that Kettenpom airstrip, where the call originated, is about 2.5 hours from the county seat in Weaverville, 97 miles distant in rural California. And, that raises a discussion of an old English phrase "posse comitatus." This is a Common Law concept that allowed a sheriff to call upon citizens for assistance in time of need. If there was need, a citizen was expected to "raise a hue and cry," and from that came the duty by which any "male over the age of fifteen" could be called upon to aid the sheriff. This evolved, in America, to the abbreviated term "posse." And, if you never saw a movie in which they either raised a posse or "headed them off at the pass," you frankly missed out and I am sorry.