By Hon. Colleen Casey, Former Commissioner, California Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board Practitioners beware! Death benefit trials often raise intricate and unique evidentiary conundrums. Obtaining...
Oakland, CA – California’s State Average Weekly Wage (SAWW) rose nearly 3.8 percent in the year ending March 31, 2024, which will result in an increase in California workers’ compensation...
CALIFORNIA COMPENSATION CASES Vol. 89, No. 10 October 2024 A Report of En Banc and Significant Panel Decisions of the WCAB and Selected Court Opinions of Related Interest, With a Digest of WCAB Decisions...
By Hon. Robert G. Rassp, Presiding Judge, WCAB Los Angeles, California Division of Workers’ Compensation Disclaimer: The material and any opinions contained in this article are solely those of...
Oakland, CA – Migraine Drugs represented less than 1% of all prescriptions dispensed to California injured workers in 2023 but they consumed 4.7% of workers’ compensation drug payments, a nearly...
A Louisiana worker, who contended he contracted the West Nile virus from a mosquito bite that occurred in his employer’s break room, sustained an accidental injury that arose out of and in the course of his employment. Affirming a factual finding by a state workers’ compensation judge, the Louisiana appellate court acknowledged a deep conflict in the evidence, but concluded that the worker had successfully established that it was more likely than not he contracted the virus as he alleged. The employer countered that there had been a widespread outbreak of the virus in the parish where the employee lived and that the worker’s evidence of employment-related contact with mosquitos was speculative. Among other things, the case illustrates the importance of winning at the trial level on the facts.
Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is the co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).
LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis
See Allen v. Graphic Packaging Int’l, Inc., 2017 La. App. LEXIS 35 (Jan. 11, 2017)
See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 5.06.
Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law
For a more detailed discussion of the case, see