Pennsylvania Workers' Compensation Lawyers Blog

Attorney David Miller and Attorney Michael J. O’Connor gave a presentation to members of United Steel Workers (USW) District 10 on Sept. 22 at Linden Hall in Dawson, PA. The annual Workers’ Compensation seminar attracted USW union leaders from across the state. The attorneys answered questions, ranging from workers’ rights to the procedure for filing claims, for approximately 122 people who were in attendance. This is the third year that O’Connor Law was asked to give a presentation during the USW’s annual workers’ compensation seminar.

The job of a workers’ compensation claims investigator is to discredit the injured worker’s claim for disability compensation. Under the laws of Pennsylvania, an insurance company may legally hire an investigator to perform surveillance on an injured worker. The surveillance is conducted in an attempt to catch the injured worker engaging in any physical activity that may be outside of his or her work restrictions.

Although investigators may not commit trespass, such as taking pictures of the injured worker inside his or her home, they may follow the injured worker, speak with neighbors, and take videotapes of the injured worker conducting normal activities in public. More often than not, these methods of surveillance can cost the investigator and the insurance company a lot of time and money.

But with the emergence of social networking sites, like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Twitter, the job of the claims investigator has now been made even easier.

“A lot of people post things they don’t expect the insurance carrier is going to be looking at,” said Frank Pinder, president of the fraud and special investigations unit of GlobalOptions Group, an Orlando, Florida-based insurance claims investigation service. In an article by Roberto Ceniceros on Workforce.com, Pinder added, “Their geology hobbies, reunions, bowling, the leagues they are involved in, fishing tournaments, hunting clubs…pastimes, organizations. Then you can further mine that for information [counter to] their claim.”

By searching for a claimant’s profile on sites like Facebook or MySpace, investigators can uncover a myriad of self-incriminating information, such as dates of sporting events in which the claimant is participating. Social networking sites can also contain time-stamped photos and videos showing claimants involved in physical activities that could be outside the level of disability that the injured worker is claiming.

“It just amazes us how much information people provide,” said Howard Schneider, president of Schneider Associates, a private investigative agency in Thousand Oaks, California.

Injured workers should be aware not only that their activities could be videotaped by an investigator, but also that any information they provide online can be easily accessible to the general public. It may not only be family and friends who are accessing their profiles, but insurance claims investigators, as well. This type of evidence may be used to challenge the injured worker’s medical testimony or to try to convince a workers’ compensation Judge that the injured worker is not as disabled as he or she is asking the Judge to believe.

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Pennsylvania fire fighters are one step closer to winning the fight against an occupational hazard: cancer. On Aug. 19 the Cancer Presumption Bill, aimed at protecting firefighters with cancer, was approved in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.

Fire fighters are frequently exposed to hazards such as carbon monoxide, diesel exhaust, asbestos, and other toxins that can lead to various forms of cancer. In an article from the WHYY.com website, Art Martynuska, president of the Pennsylvania Professional Fire Fighters Association, said, “By the nature of our business we have more of a chance of coming down with one of these cancers that can be directly related to what we do on a daily basis. It’s an occupational hazard that we have to deal with.” However, in Pennsylvania it is not automatically assumed that a fire fighters’ cancer is job-related. In order to receive workers’ compensation benefits, fire fighters who are diagnosed with cancer must prove that the disease came about as a result of the hazards of their job.

The Cancer Presumption Bill would aid Pennsylvania fire fighters by reversing this process – it would be assumed that the fire fighter developed cancer as a result of their job unless their employer or the municipality could prove that it was circumstances outside of the job that contributed to the disease. Martynuska said, “If you are involved in the fire service and you come down with one of several types of cancer, the presumption is that you got that as a result of exposure to things on the job.” The bill will assist fire fighters by assuming their cancer is job-related, and making them eligible for worker’s compensation.

The bill is now before the PA state senate. If passed, Pennsylvania will join 31 other states with laws that assume a fire fighter’s cancer is a result of the hazards of the job and therefore covered by workers’ compensation

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