Consumer Law

Chipping Away at Justice: More Workers? Comp. Woes

By Andy Hoffman

For employees with obvious work-related injuries, forcing them into workers' compensation systems in this country, with paltry benefits and increasingly difficult eligibility standards, is bad enough.  (See here,  here,  and here.) 

But for workers sick due to occupational exposure to chemicals, it?s beyond unjust.  A piece in yesterday?s New York Times told the infuriating story of Ed Abney, 53, of Berea, KY, who spent more than 20 years cleaning metal piping with trichloroethene (TCE) at a defunct Dresser Industries plant (Dick Cheney acquired Dresser while at Haliburtan).  He now suffers from Parkinson?s disease, which is pretty clearly linked to this chemical, but he can?t recover anything under Kentucky?s Workers Comp. law.

The problem is, as with most injuries like this, the standard of proving that he contracted Parkinson?s due to TCE, is impossible to meet.  But as E. Donald Elliott, a Yale Law School professor specializing in workers? comp. cases put it, simply being exposed to a risk in the workplace ?should in itself be a compensable injury.?

But it?s not.  And the really sad thing is, as the Times suggests, had Mr. Abney not been forced into the workers' comp. system and allowed to sue in court, with an attorney who could afford to fight a complex and expensive case against the insurance and chemical industries, he and other workers like him probably would have won their cases and been compensated.  It?s another sad example of what happens when you have laws that keep cases out of the tort system.

Full post as published by ThePopTort on January 26, 2009 (boomark / email).