Serving Scranton and Lackawanna County
Serving Scranton and Lackawanna County
Workers’ compensation is meant to be the straightforward part of being injured: benefits are paid without anyone having to prove fault. In practice claims are denied, wage figures come out low, and injured workers are pushed back to work before they are ready. This page sets out what the system owes you, what has to be shown, and the deadlines that apply.
A few lines is enough to start. Nothing you send here creates a lawyer-client relationship.
If your deadline is close, call the office rather than sending a form.
A workers’ compensation claim runs against your employer’s insurer rather than your employer, and fault plays no part in it. What it covers is defined: reasonable and necessary medical treatment for the work injury, and wage loss benefits while you cannot earn what you earned before. It does not compensate pain and suffering, which is the largest single difference from an injury claim.
Most of the work early on is evidential rather than adversarial. The injury has to be reported, described accurately and connected to the job in the medical record. Where a claim is denied, or benefits are stopped, the dispute goes before a Workers’ Compensation Judge, and what the record says by then largely decides it.
Insurers file petitions of their own: to modify benefits after an impairment rating evaluation, to suspend them once a job offer is made, or to challenge treatment through utilization review. Each of those has a timetable, and each is answerable. Hearings for Lackawanna County claims are held locally.
Injury at work. An injury in the course of employment. That covers a single incident and a condition that built up over time, and it covers the aggravation of something you already had.
Notice to the employer. Notice within 21 days makes benefits payable from the date of injury. After 120 days a claim is generally barred. Tell the employer in plain terms that the injury is work related, and keep a record of when you did.
Disability, on medical evidence. Wage loss benefits depend on a doctor connecting the injury to your inability to do the job, and on that record being kept current for as long as you are off.
Wage loss benefits are calculated from your average weekly wage before the injury and paid at a statutory fraction of it, subject to a yearly maximum. Treatment for the accepted work injury is paid in full, with no deductible and no co-pay, provided the provider bills the insurer rather than you.
Separate specific loss benefits apply to the permanent loss of use of a body part, and to disfigurement of the head, face or neck. A worker can be entitled to those even after going back to work, which is the entitlement most often missed.
Notice of a work injury should be given as soon as you know of it. Notice within 21 days means benefits run from the date of injury; notice after 120 days generally bars the claim altogether. A claim petition must be filed within three years of the date of injury, and a further three-year limit runs from the last payment of compensation.
If yours is not here, the answer is usually a short phone call rather than a long page.
Workers’ compensation fees are set by statute and approved by the judge: a fixed percentage of the benefits recovered, and nothing if nothing is recovered. The arrangement is put in writing before any work begins.
The insurer pays for treatment of the accepted work injury. For the first 90 days you may have to treat with a provider from the employer’s posted panel; after that you can choose your own doctor. If the claim is denied, treatment falls to your health insurer in the meantime and is recovered later.
You can be required to attend a reasonable examination, and refusing puts benefits at risk. Everything said there is reported to the insurer, so treat it as part of the claim rather than as a consultation.
Not your employer, in most cases: the system exchanges that right for benefits paid without proof of fault. Where a third party caused the injury, such as a driver or an equipment manufacturer, a separate claim can run alongside, and the compensation insurer will have a right of recovery out of it.
An accepted claim starts paying within weeks. A denied claim goes to hearings before a Workers’ Compensation Judge and takes longer, often several months to a decision. We will tell you early which yours looks like.
If the claim is litigated, you will testify before the judge, usually once. It is a hearing rather than a trial, and you will be prepared for it in advance.
A single attorney takes responsibility for each case and remains the point of contact throughout. A short conversation is usually enough to tell you whether there is a claim worth pursuing and what the next step is.
Office address to be supplied, Scranton, Pennsylvania. Nothing sent through this site creates a lawyer-client relationship.
