Category
Employee Injury
No Work Comp Immunity for Workplace Shooting
Workplace shootings create unique risks to Florida employers. Is a co-worker shooting incident covered by workers’ compensation benefits, or not? A recent case (Bottling Group v. Bastien) has wide implications for Florida employers. The court ruled that an employer cannot deny a workers’ compensation claim on the grounds that a shooting inj...
OSHA Form 300A Posting Starts February 1 and Electronic Submission is due by March 2
Covered employers (having more than 10 employees at any point in 2022) are required to post the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Form 300A (Summary of Injuries) from February 1 through April 30 unless their industry qualifies as an exempt low-risk industry. The employee count is based on the number of employees in the......
Asphalt Company Wins Work Comp Case – 5 Tips You Can Use
A Florida asphalt contractor recently benefited from having effective human resource policies. It avoided paying disability benefits to an injured employee (his skid steer loader was hit by a dump truck) that refused to return to suitable work. In Florida, an injured employee is entitled to Temporary Partial Disability benefits (hereinafter TPD...
Terminating an Employee for Misconduct While They Receive Florida Workers’ Comp
We were recently asked by a client about whether or not an employee on workers’ compensation can be terminated for misconduct. I said yes, but explained that to cut off workers’ compensation benefits the “misconduct” must meet a special definition. An employee with a workplace injury is expected to follow company policy and co...
Save Money with a Certified Written Safety Program
I know, how can it be December already? Every day you get wrapped up in the immediate demands of your business operation, and before you know it, we are in the last calendar month of 2019. If you are looking for a worthwhile initiative that can be fully implemented before the new year, consider adopting......
When are “Work from Home” injuries covered by Florida Workers’ Compensation?
More and more employers are permitting employees to work from home, for some or all of their work week. This raises the potential of home-related injuries being claimed by injured employees under the Florida Workers’ Compensation Act, even though the employer has no control over the home-based office space of the employee. What are th...
Are Contractors Required to Submit Injury data to OSHA?
Yes, if your construction company employs at least 20 employees. This new legal obligation was added to contractors several years ago. OSHA implemented the new recordkeeping rule to require specific employers (including construction contractors) to electronically submit to OSHA information from its OSHA 300A form (Summary of Work-Related�...
Alternate OSHA DART Rate Calculation Formula for Small Businesses
We’ve come across a very interesting Interpretation letter published by OSHA, regarding the unfair impact to small companies of using standard injury rate calculations. Traditionally, DART, as well as any other type of OSHA incident rates, are based on a single year’s sum of incidents, multiplied by 200,000 and then divided by th...
What is a Fitness for Duty form?
Recently, a client called to ask about an employee who had complained about a back and shoulder injury. The employee told his foreman that he did not feel that he was physically capable of performing his normal work duties as a construction laborer due to pain. He asserted that it was a workers’ compensation case......
Florida Work Comp rates dropping in 2018
It’s final. This week, the Florida Insurance Commissioner issued a directive for workers’ compensation rates to be decreased by 9.8% beginning in 2018. His final order increased the rate reductions recommended by the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI). In addition, State Insurance Commissioner David Almaier asked N...
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