I had a live chat with an injured worker recently. If you want to do that, hit the chat button and you will likely speak to an attorney for free. You can also call us or fill out our contact form.
The reason this person reached out was because he wanted to know the typical timeline for settling an Illinois workers’ compensation case.
My answer was that there is none. Every case is different. Some settle in months. Some take years. The number one factor in this is how bad is your injury and when did you recover and return to work without problem.
In other words, we want to wait until you are what is known as MMI or maximum medical improvement. This is as good as you will get physically. Hopefully it comes with a full duty release, but it might include some restrictions such as no lifting over a certain weight.
We would then want to see how successful your return to work is. If you have a desk job and broke your foot in a freakish accident, we wouldn’t be worried about you being able to do your job. On the other hand, if you had a back surgery and have a job that involves a lot of lifting, we would likely want to see you return to work for 2-3 months without problem.
There are other issues that can affect the timeline. If you might need future medical care, that issue has to be addressed as it is part of your settlement. If you can not return to your old job, you may need vocational rehabilitation to prove what you can now earn. Skipping either of those steps could cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And of course any potential defenses to your case might affect the timeline. If you have a strong case then we won’t worry about going to trial. If there is a chance you could lose trial, we might be more patient.
Once a settlement demand is made, it would be reasonable to expect a response within 30 days. If that does not happen, a good work comp lawyer will typically call the other attorney or talk to them about it if they see them in court. That isn’t as common as it used to be as a lot of court is online now. If there is no defense lawyer then the call would go to the insurance adjuster.
If no offer is made or it’s a really bad one, you have a couple of options. If it’s a bad offer, you can counter it. Or for either scenario, your lawyer can file a motion for trial. That does not mean your case will go to trial, but that gives you the option.
What typically happens then is you get assigned a trial date and we will ask the other attorney if they will agree to a pre-trial. That is an informal conference with the Arbitrator where each side gives their version of the facts and tells the Arbitrator what they think the case is worth. The Arbitrator will make non-binding opinion. The fewer the case issues, the more likely the pre-trial is to move things along.
If you can not agree after that, your lawyer should get the case ready for trial. That would add three months to the case before you can next get a hearing.
In the live chat I had, the injured worker had been back to work for over a year. His lawyer had filed four trial motions (good) but there has been no offer (bad) or pre-trial (worse). Basically he is letting the defense attorney and insurance company dictate how this case goes.
The solution is to get a new attorney or get a commitment from the old one to do their job. It really comes down to how much faith you have in them to really be ready for trial. This lawyer has a lot of red flags unfortunately.
The bottom line is the more serious the injury, the likelier it is that your case will take longer to be done with. We highly recommend that you do not settle too soon because once you do, the case and the benefits are over. Every week I get a call from an injured worker who is in pain, but can not do anything because they settled their case already.