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It’s not uncommon for it to take a month to have your first hearing come up on the pre hearing conference and then a month or two before you have your trial following that. A lot of the time it’s dependent upon what the judge’s schedule is in which judge is assigned to your case. It is to the insurance company’s benefit to delay payment. The longer they can hold on to money, the more interest and earnings they can make on that money before they lose control of the money. Hire a workers’ compensation attorney like Todd Willhoite to stop the delay.
The old days, the injured employee was allowed to pick their own treating doctor. That is no longer the case. Now the employer gets to choose who the treating doctor is. Most instances there is the option if you do not like your treating doctor to file ACC for a requesting a change of treating doctor, you’re allowed to do this one to your case on your form. You list three doctors that you would like to have to be your treating doctor. Then the employer can say no and they can list three other doctors and you can try to change one of those doctors they’ve listed on their list. If they give you options that you do not lie, you have the option of having the, the judge decide who your treating doctor will be. Many times the employer or their insurance company will try to starve out the injured worker by simply refusing to provide them medical treatment and refusing to provide the temporary total disability payments with no valid excuse. They may try to come up with some minor excuse for their behavior, but generally they’re not founded. In fact, instead, they’re one team, the employee to have financial hardship and be forced to settle the case, or sometimes they hope the employee just throws up their arms, walks away and leaves the employer or the insurance company with no responsibility.
It’s important to get an attorney early to help minimize the amount of time the employer or the insurance company can delay your treatment and your weekly payments. People who delay getting their attorney ended up putting himself in a worse position by potentially having their benefits delayed to the point that the financial hardship becomes so much they’re under economic duress to come to some settlement that’s not adequate.
The sooner you get a workers’ compensation attorney, the sooner they can get you to a doctor to write the medical reports needed for the judge to make a ruling in your favor. The sooner a hearing can be requested, the sooner the pre hearing comes up in the sooner the, ultimately the trial is Italian and of course your attorney may be able to negotiate for the providing of benefits or getting you to a medical doctor or before the hearing comes up that the longer you delay in getting your attorney journey and starting to seek benefits, the more at risk you put yourself.
What are the benefits of the workers’ compensation system was what they referred to as the grand bargain and that is where the injured employee gave up the right to have a jury decide how much the compensation they were should receive for their injuries. In exchange for a set amount, the employer gave up the right to contest responsibility for injuries that occurred on the job. Now, if you’re injured on the job and it’s not horseplay or some other exceptions such as using drugs on the job, things of that nature, then the employer is responsible no matter who caused the injury. (A workers’ compensation attorney can tell you specifics.) Even if you were negligent, caused your own self to be injured. As long as it wasn’t intentional, then you may have coverage under workers’ comp. Now, if you disabled safety mechanisms such as safety guards and you get injured as a result of that, then you might not be covered under workers’ compensation, but for the most part, most people will be covered as long as it occurred in their of employment. The injury occurred in their scope of out. Sometimes a person gets injured by a third party. In other words, if maybe they’re driving for their work between one location and other and someone hits them a car, then they may, in addition to the workers’ compensation claims, they will have a claim against the person who drove the car and caused him injuries. The situations need to be handled by an attorney because you could accidentally forfeit benefits if you do not proceed in the correct manner. But when it’s done right, as a good workers’ compensation attorney can guide you, you may be able to receive your workers’ compensation benefits in the short term along with getting your medical bills paid. So get your weekly benefits, get your medical taken care of, and then you end up settling a case against the person that hit you for more than what you’d be awarded under Worker’s compensation. These rules get complicated and are outside the scope of this article.
Some of the barriers to bring a lawsuit have been reduced or there are work arounds in worker’s compensation. For instance, there is $140 filing fee for a workers’ compensation case, but it is not required up front from the injured employee. In fact, as long as the injury is found compensable, in other words, the employer is responsible for it, then the employer or their insurance an will have to pay the expenses of the filing fee so the injured worker is not out of pocket up front for those expenses and as long as they win their case, they’re not responsible for those expenses later on. Additionally, the injured employee does not have to come up with a large amount of cash to pay a workers’ compensation attorney. These cases are handled on a contingency fee basis. Typically, the fee is 10% of the Annie Award. For the temporary total disability benefits and 20% of the award or the permanent partial impairment of water that the end or permanent partial disability.
Call Willhoite Law, PLLC for more information at (918) 341-3101.