Personal Injury Trial Lawyers Serving Connecticut for Over 50 Years

Worker's Compensation Laws Too Restrictive

March 11, 2008

Robert R. Sheldon, Courant.com

A 50-year-old health care worker injures her back while moving a patient. Surgery is required. But after recovering from the operation, the doctor says there will be a permanent, partial disability - returning to the same type of work is no longer an option. A career is ended, with little likelihood of being able to earn as much as before being hurt. Worse, Connecticut's workers' compensation law says that when initial disability payments run out, even with a permanent disability that prohibits a return to the former job, longer-term wage-replacement benefits are very limited.

Or consider the plight of a 25-year-old laborer accidentally buried in 300 to 400 degree asphalt up to his thighs while doing paving work and suffering severe burns to both of legs. Despite a significant permanent disfigurement, this worker cannot recover benefits for his job-related scars under present law simply because they are not on his head, face or neck.

These clients of mine and thousands of injured workers have met with these harsh and unfair realities of the Connecticut workplace.

For decades, workers who suffered a permanent injury on the job and subsequent permanent reductions in their earning capacity were permitted to recover benefits to replace some of that lost income without limitation on how long they could receive those benefits. Similarly, scarring benefits were allowed for all parts of the body, not just a select few.

But the laws were amended in 1993. An arbitrary cap on wage replacement benefits was established. A permanently injured worker, for example, with a 10 percent disability of the master arm - worth 20.8 weeks of benefits for the physical disability - can only recover up to 20.8 additional weeks for lost income, despite the life-long adverse effect of the injury on earnings.

Present law is arbitrary and unfair. It places a restrictive cap on wage-loss awards, regardless of the severity of the injuries or long-range economic impact upon workers and their families. Current law also unduly prevents scarring awards for most work injuries unless they occur to the head, face or neck.

Workers' compensation commissioners should be allowed to treat injured workers as individuals, not as numbers. They should be given the flexibility, on a case-by-case basis, to award a greater range of wage-replacement benefits to injured workers. They should likewise be empowered to award benefits for permanent disfigurement, when appropriate, for all parts of the body.

These simple legislative changes would result in relatively minimal cost and place responsibility for wage replacement and scarring on employers, rather than shifting those expenses to unemployment, welfare or other similar state and federal programs.

Our state Workers' Compensation Act, first enacted nearly 100 years ago, was based upon a fundamental principle of fairness. Employees injured on the job gave up the right to sue their employers in exchange for the employers' agreement to provide an equitable system for recovery.

However, following a nationwide trend, sweeping "reform" measures were enacted in Connecticut in the early '90s. In addition to severely limiting wage-replacement benefits and payments for scarring, other changes lowered the base compensation rate and reduced most permanent disability awards by one-third. Overall, benefits to injured workers were cut by approximately 40 percent.

Since the reform measures were enacted, employees have suffered while insurers have reaped windfall profits. During the 12 years following enactment, after-tax profit earned by workers' comp insurance companies in Connecticut exceeded $882 million - more than double the national average. The goal of reform was to ease the financial burden on Connecticut businesses, not to create a slush fund for the insurance industry.

In last year's legislative session, advocates for injured workers supported several proposals to address some of these inequities - particularly, wage-replacement and scarring benefits. Two bills that would have accomplished that goal passed the Labor and Public Employees Committee. The wage-replacement bill also passed the Appropriations Committee and the full Senate but, perplexingly, was never called in the House.

Legislators should pass similar initiatives in the current session. It is time to restore fairness, balance and flexibility in the workers' compensation process. Injured workers in Connecticut deserve nothing less.

Robert R. Sheldon is a lawyer in Bridgeport. He is a former president of the Connecticut Trial Lawyers Association.

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