From Bob's Cluttered Desk

A newly announced study in Canada produced some interesting results, determining that people who had recently immigrated to that country, and were over qualified for the jobs they held, were up to five times as likely to be injured on the job. Even after the researchers factored in the physical job demands of specific positions,…

Recently all 66 recruits at the Memphis Police Training Academy – 100% of the class – filed claims for on the job injuries after undergoing a “bear crawl” exercise in temperatures approaching 100 degrees.  Apparently the claims started with just 10 recruits, but ultimately all of the recruits filed injury claims resulting from the exercise.…

Sometimes it feels as if the whole world is off its axis, and that logic, decency and common sense fell off the planet on the last turn. I was reading my morning paper today and a couple different stories caught my eye. One was about a lifeguard here in Florida who helped to save a…

  Honesty, it turns out, may not always be the best policy, particularly if you are a child molester who desires a job in law enforcement. A Missouri man being interviewed for a position with that states Highway Patrol seemingly torpedoed his chances of gainful employment by admitting in the interview to sexually inappropriate behavior…

A pilot who was crop dusting and crashed his plane in 1953 has filed a first time claim for the injuries he received. And I thought the wait at TSA Security was interminable. Len Fisher was flying over the town of Neepawa, Manitoba, Canada, on June 23, 1953, when he hit a telephone wire and…

Businesses in America are being crushed by regulation. We spend an inordinate amount of money on compliance, modifications, reporting, and of course lawsuits related to allegedly not doing any of that correctly. Businesses today must comply with a myriad of rules and regulations from a variety of government entities I simply refer to as the…

We talk a lot about the importance of communication in this industry. We stress how critical it is when managing claims. We don't always, however, talk about what happens when communication is poor or altogether absent. We talk about what we should do, and not necessarily what happens when we don't. I was reminded of…

You have to sometimes wonder about people who work the midnight fast food drive thru shifts. A southern California Del Taco customer found that out the hard way this week. The customer got into a dispute over his order, and the incident escalated until the Del Taco employee with whom he was engaged in discussion,…

I read today that the Veterans Affairs Department is looking to reduce suicide among veterans with the increased use of technology. Specifically, they hope to “reduce the risk of suicide among veterans by making greater use of video conferences between patients and doctors and by gradually integrating its electronic health records with those maintained by…

Yes, you read that right. With all the talk recently about changing the disability mindset in this country, this story, while not workers' comp related, highlights much of the mentality we deal with in the industry. A 47 year old man in Las Vegas has an extremely rare condition that has caused his scrotum to…