From Bob's Cluttered Desk

Editor’s Note: This is the third article in a week long series discussing workers’ compensation fraud. The first article in the series may be read here. There is one big problem with workers’ compensation fraud, besides the fact that, you know, well, it’s fraud. That problem is this: Assuming that we actually recognize fraud when it…

Editor’s Note: This is the second in a week long series discussing workers’ compensation fraud. The first article in the series may be read here. In the early years of World War II, brilliant mathematician Alan Turing and a team of top cryptographers toiled in secret trying to break the German war machine’s Enigma code. Enigma…

Editor’s Note: This is the first of a weeklong series of articles related to workers’ compensation fraud, generated from discussions at a recent conference of the Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau of California. It was the overriding message that came out of a “Speed Networking” session held at the WCIRB Annual Conference in San Francisco last week.…

If workers’ compensation were an aquarium, most states would be a small to medium sized fish. A couple would be guppies. Some would be dolphins. Illinois would be a shark. And California would be a whale. Representing over 20% of the entire workers’ compensation market, the significance of the state in the overall system is…

Monday, we wrote a piece about a man who had experienced a stroke on the job which was misdiagnosed by a company nurse. He applied for workers’ compensation benefits, but they were denied. Instead of appealing, he sued his employer based on the damages from the company nurse’s misdiagnosis of his condition. The point of…

This is a story of a workers’ comp claim denied, followed by what appears to be a herculean effort to seek protections under the same legal pretense that was previously refused. It is a lesson that we should be careful what you wish for; you just might end up getting what you deserve. It is…

Bob has been in the Four Corners area this week, attending to family business. In his absence, we republish this article from 08/13/13. This article was a follow up to the archived post republished yesterday. __________________________ Last week I wrote a tongue in cheek article about why more men are killed by lightningwhile on the job…

Bob has been in the Four Corners area this week, attending to family business. In his absence, we republish this article from 07/31/13. This original article also resulted in a follow up post, available here, and which will be republished tomorrow. ___________________________________ I really have no directly citable evidence that more men than women are killed…

Today is a legal holiday in the State of Florida. June 3rd is the birthday of one Jefferson Davis, first, only and not coincidentally, last president of the Confederate States of America. In his early days Davis attended West Point, where he was once placed under house arrest for his role in the 1826 Eggnog Riot, which started…

  Oh, how quickly we forget.  A Maine joint legislative committee voted earlier this week to endorse a workers’ compensation reform bill designed to significantly increase indemnity benefits for injured workers. The bill has now been sent to the floor as part of an omnibus bill that includes about two dozen legislative reforms for workers’ comp in…