Departing sharply from notions of “liability immunity” member scholars at the Center for Progressive Reform (CPR)—including yours truly—have offered in a new report sustained argument for establishment of a Private Right of Action under the OSH Act. Although not directly
Workers’ Compensation Law Prof Blog
Latest from Workers’ Compensation Law Prof Blog - Page 7
Every Time I Think It Can’t get Worse . . . Michigan GOP’s Draconian COVID-19 Proposal
Senator Zorn, the Michigan state republican senator who allegedly wore a protective face mask on the Michigan Senate floor depicting a design similar to the battle flag of the Confederate States of America, has proposed his own type of…
Quick Discussion of Republican Liability Immunity Bill: the ‘‘Safe To Work Act’’ (Yikes)
The bill is here. It is every bit as sweeping as advertised. It is described in this manner: “To lessen the burdens on interstate commerce by discouraging insubstantial lawsuits relating to COVID–19 while preserving the ability of individuals and…
Workers’ Compensation, Air-Bags, and the Great Reconfiguring
I recently saw a short piece on workers’ compensation. Essentially the piece contended that there will be few COVID workers’ compensation claims, the claims are not expensive, and the impact of presumptions has been minimal. Workers’ compensation premiums have not…
Liability Immunity and Personal Security—Irreconcilable Ideas?
I wrote in general terms back on June 10 about the “liability shield” that will probably be front and center in the debate over the next COVID-19 Relief Bill. No bill has yet been produced, but everyone is pretty clear…
Workers’ Compensation, Science, and Cancer Presumptions
The Ontario workers’ compensation agency has made public a commissioned report on how the law can be improved so that science more properly informs the manner in which presumptions can aid the compensability of occupational cancers. And the focus…
Not the Usual Webinar: “Racial Inequity for Professionals in Workers’ Compensation”
The California-based website WorkCompCentral presented, this week, a free webinar featuring a panel discussing the challenges that African-Americans, Latinos, and other people of color face in entering and rising through the ranks of the workers’ compensation industry. …
Is a New Extrahazardous Economy Upon Us? May States Choke Off All Worker Injury Rights in Reaction to It?
From the beginning of the pandemic I have harbored an intuition that the most difficult COVID-19 legal issues would manifest not during lockdown but while the economy was reopening. My suspicion has been that at some point it would be…
Trump’s OSHA Too Tough for Smithfield? & Why the Defense Production Act Probably Does not Immunize Anyone From Tort Claims
Trump’s OSHA has committed the unpardonable sin of subpoenaing Download DOH subpoena from the South Dakota Department of Health certain information that Smithfield Foods provided it during the early days of the Covid outbreak: employee reports of illness; COVID-19 test…
Will COVID-19 “Shock” Workplace Injury Law Like the Railroads of the Early-20th Century?
Workers’ compensation was a means to an end and not an end in itself. It addressed the outrageous frequency of workplace injury and death caused by railroads in the late-19th/early 20th century. The unholy trinity of affirmative tort defenses—assumption of…