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Legal News

: Lawbeat

Inside the workers comp hellhole

By Mark Obbie

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God bless The New York Times. This, boys and girls, is what you get when you invest in real reporting by professionals: a wondrous piece of muckraking, with human tragedy, vivid scenes, masses of data and background boiled down to digestible portions, and a passionate howl at the wasteful, cruel bureaucracy that New York calls a workers compensation system. In a package labeled "A World of Hurt," N.R. Kleinfield and Steve Greenhouse, and their headline writer, don't skimp on colorful putdowns of the dysfunctional, multibillion-dollar mess: "legal swamp," "a subbasement of the legal world," and my favorite, "meatball justice." Leavening the data and findings are scenes like this, taken from what the writers say was "18 months attending hearings, reviewing cases and interviewing participants":

George Vasilescu's reaction was immediate. He tossed his head back, thumped his feet.'No more,' Mr. Vasilescu, who is deaf and mute, signed. 'I beg you. No more.'Mr. Vasilescu, 64, a hotel steward who hurt his back, neck and wrist, had just been told by his lawyer that the judge wanted him back for another medical exam, another hearing, another delay, after four years churning through the system.It is a good day at the Queens hearing office when there is only one such outburst.

I'll even forgive Kleinfield and Greenhouse for the predictable description of the system as "something out of Kafka" because they follow that with this delicious detail -- that Kafka "was himself once a compensation claims examiner." Perfect.

Full post as published by Lawbeat on March 31, 2009 (boomark / email).