| Workers' Compensation Exemption re Number of Employees |
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| In some states, an employer is exempt from maintaining workers' compensation insurance if it regularly employs only a certain number of employees. For example, with certain exceptions, employers in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Virginia, New Mexico, and North Carolina are exempt if they have less than three employees. Employers in Rhode Island and South Carolina are exempt if employing less than four employees while employers in Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee are exempt if employing less than five employees. If the employee is injured and the state has altered its exemption statute, the operative version of the statute on the date of the employee's injury will control. More... |
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| Employee Misconduct That Does and Does Not Deviate From Employment |
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| When an employee engages in misconduct, his receipt of workers' compensation benefits can be jeopardized depending on whether such misconduct constituted a deviation from his course of employment. If the employee has deviated from the course of employment, and is then injured, he will generally be denied benefits. Prohibited conduct is a marker for misconduct. It is only that prohibited conduct concerning the employee's fundamental job for which he was employed that will affect compensation eligibility. Even though prohibited, conduct that merely violates the way or means that an employee uses to accomplish his job duties is still within the course of his employment. More... |
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| Traveling To and From Work |
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| Employees do not only suffer injuries while actively in the service of their employer. Some injuries occur outside working hours while the employee is traveling to or from work. Workers' compensation for such injuries may be recovered only if they occur on the employer's premises. The employer's "premises" is not just that area in which the employee normally works or where the majority of work performed for the employer takes place. Rather, "premises" encompasses the entire grounds of the employer including all buildings and structures thereon as well as parking lots. Generally, compensation will be denied if the employee was injured elsewhere. Additionally, this "going and coming" rule for compensability is only applicable when the employee has established working hours and a set working location. More... |
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| Self-employment |
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| The central question of whether a given state can apply its workers' compensation statute focuses on various factors including the place that the employment contract was entered into, the place of the employee's injury, and the employee's usual place of employment. For example, an employee who entered into an employment contract with a construction company in California, and who was subsequently injured on a construction site in Nevada, may be able to seek workers' compensation benefits in both California and Nevada. However, double recoveries are generally not permitted. More... |
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| Pediatric Consultative Examination Reports |
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| A medical professional who has been tapped by the Social Security Administration (SSA) to conduct a consultative examination of a child must include certain information in his report. The SSA mandates that the report containing an assessment of the child's history, examination, and any laboratory findings be consistent with the format for reporting results used for complete internal medicine examinations. The report must be thorough and complete in order to provide the SSA with the necessary information to determine the nature, duration, and severity of the child's impairment as well as the limitations that such impairment places on the child. More... |
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