November 15, 2011 by Fred Hosier
It’s been said that if both sides in a dispute are unhappy with you, you must be doing something right. That could be the situation involving the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation (BWC) since it faces two separate lawsuits …
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Tags: lawsuit, Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation, Workers' comp
November 14, 2011 by Fred Hosier
In September, an Allentown, PA, newspaper published a series of articles about employees at an Amazon.com warehouse working in severe heat. Now, the other shoe has dropped: An employee sued Amazon for exposure to cold conditions.
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August 22, 2011 by Fred Hosier
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) appears to be sending a message to employers: You can’t automatically refuse to hire applicants who test positive for methadone, a medication prescribed in drug treatment programs for recovering opiate addicts.
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Tags: ADA, EEOC, methadone, recovering addict, safety sensitive job
August 1, 2011 by Fred Hosier
For workers who travel as part of their jobs, workers’ compensation covers certain kinds of injuries involved with the travel itself — no question about that. Then, there’s this case …
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Tags: Australia, business trip, injuries involved with travel, workers' compensation
July 26, 2011 by Fred Hosier
A state workers’ compensation law requires employees to give proper notice of a workplace injury to employers to receive benefits. The question in this case: Did a series of communications between employee and employer add up to proper notice?
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Tags: carpal tunnel, lifting restriction, proper notification, Workers' comp
July 22, 2011 by Fred Hosier
When it comes to workers’ comp benefits, is employee hearing loss over a long period of time different from other injuries suffered in the workplace? The answer is key in a lawsuit by more than 40 workers.
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Tags: hearing loss, long-term exposure, Louisiana, refinery, Workers' comp
June 29, 2011 by Fred Hosier
Scenario: A company requires employees to sign an agreement to not use cell phones while driving for business. Despite that, the company dispatcher regularly calls drivers on their cell phones. What’s the company’s liability if there’s a crash?
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Tags: cell phones, crash, liability
June 27, 2011 by Fred Hosier
Fact: 16 states and Washington, DC, have laws that allow the medical use of marijuana for patients with fatal diseases or chronic pain. What’s not as clear: How these laws impact workplace drug policies. Now, another state court has weighed in.
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Tags: medical marijuana, TeleTech, Washington state, workplace drug policies
June 13, 2011 by Fred Hosier
A Baltimore man has won an $814,500 judgment after he developed popcorn lung from workplace exposure.
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Tags: bronchiolitis obliterans, diacetyl, Kenneth McClain, popcorn lung
June 4, 2011 by Fred Hosier
A state supreme court has weighed in on whether punitive damages awarded by a jury to a paralyzed worker were too large.
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Tags: fall, fractured spine, inspection program, paralyzed worker, punitive damages, Qwest
May 27, 2011 by Fred Hosier
Does your company have a policy that prohibits texting and/or talking on cell phones while employees are driving for business purposes? A recent survey provides some benchmarks.
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Tags: cell phone policy, driving for business purposes, prohibit texting, smartphone apps
May 26, 2011 by Fred Hosier
An employee said a workplace injury left him in pain, unable to “enjoy life’s pleasures” or wear shorts because of an embarrassing scar. Given those claims, attorneys for his former employer were interested in what was on his Facebook page.
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Tags: Facebook, forklift, leg scar, warehouse
May 25, 2011 by Fred Hosier
What happens when the widow of an employee killed at work is allowed to sue the employer over and above workers’ comp benefits? Once a judge allows a lawsuit to go forward, an expensive settlement, such as this one, is often the result.
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Tags: Certified Steel, crane, hazardous workplace, lawsuit
May 2, 2011 by Fred Hosier
A former University of Northern Iowa (UNI) professor filed a claim for workers’ compensation benefits, claiming years of mistreatment by colleagues and administrators forced her to have a mental health breakdown. Now, a workers’ comp commissioner has ruled in the case.
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Tags: mental health breakdown, stress, Workers' comp
April 29, 2011 by Fred Hosier
A power company has agreed to pay $27 million dollars to settle a lawsuit in connection with a fire that killed one worker and trapped three others atop a 976-foot-tall smokestack for four hours.
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Tags: American Electric Power, defective cable, lawsuit settlement, lift, safety culture, smokestack fire
April 4, 2011 by Fred Hosier
It’s almost one year since the oil well explosion in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 workers and caused the biggest offshore spill in U.S. history. A recent news report says the federal government is consolidating its efforts to bring criminal charges against the company and perhaps some of its managers.
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Tags: BP explosion, criminal charges, Deepwater Horizon, involuntary manslaughter, sacrificed safety
March 18, 2011 by Fred Hosier
OSHA’s General Duty Clause says employers have to furnish places of employment free from hazards that are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to employees. Does that include a smoke-free workplace? One casino faces a lawsuit.
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Tags: casino, class action lawsuit, General Duty Clause, provide safe workplace, second-hand smoke
March 1, 2011 by Fred Hosier
Workers’ compensation is supposed to be the exclusive remedy for an employee injured at work — it protects employers from lawsuits. But that doesn’t stop some workers from trying to find the situations when comp isn’t the exclusive remedy.
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Tags: exclusive remedy, general contractor, Workers' comp
February 28, 2011 by Fred Hosier
Sixteen states now have medical marijuana laws. A Wal-Mart employee, fired after a positive post-injury drug test for marijuana, says his dismissal violated one of those state laws.
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Tags: drug test, medical marijuana, unlawful termination, Wal-Mart
February 21, 2011 by Fred Hosier
A lawsuit in Florida alleges that lack of machine guarding left an employee disfigured.
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Tags: contract worker, lawsuit, machine guarding, severed
February 10, 2011 by Fred Hosier
Sixteen residents have filed a lawsuit to stop Bayer CropScience from using a toxic chemical at a West Virginia plant where an explosion killed two workers in August 2008.
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Tags: Bayer CropScience, methyl isocyanate, production pressure, resident lawsuit, toxic chemical
January 19, 2011 by Fred Hosier
Did a maintenance worker willfully enter a trash compactor, or did he fall in? That’s one question involved with a lawsuit filed by the worker’s children, alleging wrongful death.
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Tags: family lawsuit, maintenance worker, trash compactor
January 14, 2011 by Fred Hosier
Even after an OSHA fine, SeaWorld plans to restart shows with killer whales next month, almost a year to the day that a trainer was killed by one of the animals.
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Tags: Dine with Shamu, killer whales, SeaWorld
December 22, 2010 by Fred Hosier
The story of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has just about disappeared from general news coverage following the capping of the well a few months ago. But the next chapter in this story is just beginning.
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Tags: civil lawsuit, Deepwater Horizon, Gulf oil spill
December 9, 2010 by Fred Hosier
A sales associate at a Staples store has filed a lawsuit claiming she was fired after complaining to OSHA about cleaning an overflowing toilet without protective gear.
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Tags: clean restroom, overflowing toilet, protective gear, Staples
November 19, 2010 by Fred Hosier
A former executive assistant at a Detroit law group has filed a lawsuit alleging, because of a Mad Men like atmosphere, she was required to wear high heels which caused her to trip and injure her back. She sued after the firm didn’t provide her with a job after medical leave.
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Tags: Honigman, tripped and fell, tripped in high heels, Workers' comp
November 1, 2010 by Fred Hosier
Scenario: One of your employees is taking a legally prescribed medication and works with machinery that has the potential to maim or kill. The label on the medication warns against driving or operating machinery while taking the drug. What do you do?
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Tags: drug testing, Dura Automotive Systems, prescribed medications, Quest diagnostics, Workers' comp
October 14, 2010 by Fred Hosier
A company removed guards from a shredder, assigned an underage employee to use it and didn’t train him. The teen was crushed to death in the shredder. Does the teen’s family have a case for wrongful death, or are they limited to workers’ comp death benefits?
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Tags: killed in shredder, machine guards, underage employee, Workers' comp, wrongful death
September 27, 2010 by Fred Hosier
A deaf man applied to a mining company for a job. It didn’t hire him, and the man filed a lawsuit under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Who won?
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Tags: ADA, EEOC, mine, near-miss, reasonable accommodation
August 31, 2010 by Fred Hosier
A jury in Chicago has awarded the largest individual verdict in a popcorn lung disease case.
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Tags: BASF Corp., bronchiolitis obliterans, diacetyl, jury award, popcorn lung
August 20, 2010 by Fred Hosier
OSHA shows it’s serious about stepping up action against companies accused of firing workers for making complaints about safety.
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Tags: complained to OSHA, safety hazard, whistleblower
August 19, 2010 by Fred Hosier
Sure, a $16.6 million OSHA fine sounds like a lot of money. But that might be only the tip of the iceberg in the case involving an explosion at a Kleen Energy construction site.
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Tags: explosion, federal lawsuit, Kleen Energy
June 16, 2010 by Jim Burger
How far should the “exclusive remedy” provision of workers’ comp go?
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Tags: court, criminal charges, Workers' comp
May 13, 2010 by Fred Hosier
At Safety News Alert, we comb the Internet daily to find news stories of interest to safety pros. So, you can’t blame us for wanting to find out what this story was about after reading the headline:
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Tags: Australia, forklift, missing step
April 9, 2010 by Fred Hosier
A police dispatcher in the Chicago area told her supervisor that she had narcolepsy which causes people to fall asleep unexpectedly. However, medication was keeping the condition under control.
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Tags: fall asleep, narcolepsy, police dispatcher
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