Cases Involving Worker’s Compensation - a Lose-Lose for Employers

Cases involving Worker’s Compensation- A lose-lose for Employers

In society we are faced with the fact that we must work in order to be financially sound. And throughout the course of time, laws we put in place where if you ever got hurt on the job that you’re working for, you would be covered with a policy called worker’s compensation. It has saved lives for certain people, allowed certain people to continue their normal life style and has even set people up for retirement. But with every good comes some bad and there seems to be a problem with workers compensation. People have been taking advantage of the system. Nowadays thousands of employees are faking injuries on the job, or pretending to be seriously hurt so they don’t have to return to work. This is a crisis that needs to be fixed. I think that people in general don’t really know the effects of worker’s compensation. Everyone in the end is going to suffer. Tax dollars are going to be wasted, the price of consumer goods is going to go up, and employers and legitimate injured workers are going to lose money.

Workers compensation is defined as a law that provides compensation for employees who are injured in the course of employment. (Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia) Depending how everything is viewed and documented these are parts of the benefits package; weekly payments in lieu of wages, compensation for economic loss, reimbursement or partial payment for medical and like expenses, and general damages for pain and suffering. Basically worker’s compensation is set in place for the safetly of an employee if he or she gets injured at work. So whats the problem?

Worker’s Compensation has many different laws within it. For instance, it is illegal in some states for an employer to terminate an employee for filing a worker’s compensation claim. But in some states, it is legal to terminate those only certain cirucmstances. So different states have different laws regarding worker’s compensation claims. Something that is illegal in every state and is the topic of much concern, is when employees falsely claim worker’s compensation benefits. Employers now are forced to hire private investigators to watch and videotape the employee off the job. They try to catch him in the act of doing something that he reported he couldn’t do at work. TV shows are now braodcasting any film they get on these fake employees. With more and more people claiming injuries in the workplace, employers are forced to use investigators and catch their wrong employees. Not only due employers have to worry about employees falsely claiming worker’s compensation, many (employers and businesses) have to worry about illegal immigrants claiming worker’s compensation. Just another flaw in the system that causes employers million of dollars.

The first case involves a women named Carmelita Colatat. Carmelita worked for the United States Postal Service and on October 6th, 1998, she complained about a knee injury. She told co-workers around the job that she could not work. The next day, Colatat submitted a form CA-1,"Federal Employee's Notice of Traumatic Injury and Claim for Continuation of Pay or Compensation," that was an application to the Department of Labor (DOL) for workers’ compensation benefits under FECA. On the form, she recorded that she injured her knee lifting “60-pound” trays of mail at her job. The Postal Service then denied her claim and submitted written statements from other postal employees who had heard Colatat say that she hurt her knee at home.

Colatat was denied her claim on November 25th, 1998 by OWCP due to a specific statement from a neighbor. A neighbor of Colatat said she was performing “yard work” on the afternoon of October 6th, 1998, the day in which Colatat states she was injured at work. Also in the statement, is a conformation of Colatat stating that she was fine and had no knee problems. “On January 4, 1999, during the period between OWCP's two decisions, the Postal Service, based on an additional investigation of the claim by the Postal Inspection Service, issued Colatat a Notice of Removal charging that she submitted the form CA-1 knowing it to be false”.(www.vls.law.villanova.edu)

After many back and forth trips to court, Colatat tried to get reinstated saying that her rights to public privacy had been violated and that there was a violation of the plain language of the postal workers' collective bargaining agreement. Colatat was then granted benefits for the injury and an appeal process was going on to see if she was going to be reinstated. Here is where the private investigator comes into play. The investigator went to the ambulance driver and medics on