Blog Posts: Taking Care of HR Business
Visit the Full BlogHuman resource professionals, supervisors, and company executives alike face a constantly changing and evolving legal landscape. Verrill's Taking Care of HR Business blog is here to keep you up to date on the newest and most important legal developments for employers.
This Week's Show: Beth Smith – What’s Covered? Workers’ Compensation 101
On Saturday, August 7, Tawny Alvarez, Verrill attorney and co-host of HR Power Hour, interviewed fellow Verrill attorney Elizabeth Smith for this segment of HR Power Hour. For this episode, Tawny and Beth discuss pre-existing injuries, emotional wellness, stress, a skiing accident—are they covered by workers’ compensation? Beth has...
This Week's Show: COVID 19 and Workers’ Compensation
On Saturday, January 16, Tawny interviewed Elizabeth Smith, Counsel in Verrill's Employment and Labor Group, for this segment of HR Power Hour. For this episode, Beth and Tawny discuss what COVID-19 means for workers' compensation Beth has litigated numerous employment and labor law matters in the course of her...
NWCDN Workers' Compensation in a Post-COVID World
Join the National Workers' Compensation Defense Network (NWCDN) and the WorkersCompensation.com Center for Education Excellence for a live virtual seminar on November 12, starting at 10:00AM E.S.T. This year, due to COVID-19 concerns, the organization has partnered with WorkersCompensation.com to bring you two virtual stages, offering panels that will...
The NWCDN’s COVID-19 Benefits Survey: A State By State Analysis
The National Workers’ Compensation Defense Network (NWCDN), a nationwide and Canadian network of law firms, has published COVID-19 updates, including “COVID-19 Benefits Survey,” a state by state analysis of the pandemic layoffs and affects on benefits as of April 13, 2020. Beth Smith , a member of the NWCDN...
Should Employers Recognize COVID-19 As A Work-Related Injury?
While we know that everyone is being bombarded with COVID-19 recommendations, advice, news and data, one area that appears to have been overlooked is the question of whether COVID-19 infection, if acquired at work and due to the work performed, might result in a workers’ compensation injury. That specific...
Compromise Reached in Maine Workers’ Compensation Reform
Governor Mills has signed into law amendments to the existing Workers' Compensation Act that are the product of a bipartisan effort to avoid a series of proposed legislation that would have had the very real risk of dragging Maine back to pre-1992 status. With the election of a Democratic...
12 Days of HR: Dashing Through the Snow in a One-Horse Open Sleigh Could Result in a Work-Related Injury
As every New Englander knows, during this time of year the roads get frosty and even short trips become trickier. Even the most responsible employer cannot fully protect his employees from slip and falls in the parking lot following a snowstorm, or fender-benders while traveling for work. As a...
PODCAST UPDATE: Maine Supreme Court Rules in Medical Marijuana Workers’ Compensation Case
This time last year, Verrill Dana Labor & Employment Attorney Elizabeth Connellan Smith discussed the anticipated decision in the Bourgoin v. Twin Rivers Paper Company, LLC case and appeal in an episode of Verrill Voices entitled, Medical Marijuana: Is it reasonable and necessary? . Among the first cases to...
NCCI Maine Advisory Forum 2018
On Thursday, March 22, 2018, Attorney Beth Smith attended the morning session of the National Council of Compensation Insurance (NCCI) State Advisory Forum for Maine, held in Portland, Maine. Justin Moulton and Jim Davis hosted on behalf of NCCI, and there were roughly thirty attendees. The session opened with...
The "Weinstein Effect" and Workers' Comp: When Sexual Harassment or Assault is a Work-Related Injury
Anyone who is even half-paying attention to the news has been reminded that, despite years of open discussion and training around the issue of appropriate behavior in the workplace, some things just haven't changed. There are still predators, idiots and bores among us. As the season for office holiday...
Medical Marijuana: Is it reasonable and necessary?
Verrill Dana Labor & Employment attorney Beth Smith discusses the anticipated decision in Bourgoin v. Twin Rivers Paper Company that should provide some clarity about whether or not workers' compensation insurers will be compelled to compensate for medicinal marijuana expenses incurred by injured workers. Stream the podcast online here...
Straight to the Heart of Dixie: Alabama Workers' Compensation Act Ruled Unconstitutional
On Monday, May 8, a Jefferson County (Birmingham) Circuit Court Judge found two specific provisions of the Alabama Workers' Compensation Act unconstitutional, and because one or more provisions of the law were unconstitutional, the entire law was struck down. The two provisions at issue were a maximum cap of...
Breaking News on Medical Marijuana in Maine Workers' Compensation
We have just learned that the State of Maine Supreme Judicial Court, sitting as the Law Court, has accepted Bourgoin v. Twin Rivers Paper Co., L.L.C., and Decision No. 16-26 , one of a pair of Administrative Law Judge decisions addressing medical marijuana that the Appellate Division affirmed last...
Your Watch Does What? Wearable Technology in the Workplace… For Better or Worse
From wristwatches that can take pictures to retinal scanners to fitness trackers, wearable devices are becoming increasingly popular in everyday life, including at work. A study found that employees using wearable technology reported an 8.5% increase in productivity and a 3.5% increase in job satisfaction. Although wearable devices can...
Twist and Shout, or A Small Victory in the Fight Against Creeping Non-Occupational Injury Coverage In Maine Workers’ Compensation
In a decision issued on February 17, 2017 ( Fuller v. Hannaford Brothers Company, App. Div. 7-17 ), the Maine Workers' Compensation Board Appellate Division revisited the two-pronged "arising out of" and "in the course of" standard necessary for an injury to be work-related. As many readers know, an...
A Bourbon Conundrum
The recent week-long strike at two Jim Beam facilities in Kentucky highlights a very interesting tension in the current workplace. Workers at the Boston and Clermont, Kentucky facilities overwhelmingly rejected the second contract proposal in two weeks, stepping out on strike on October 15, 2016. The second contract proposal...
Breaking News on DOL “Threats” to Federalize Workers’ Compensation
On Wednesday, October 5, 2016, a much-anticipated report generated by the NASI (National Academy of Social Insurance) was released. The report had been shrouded in secrecy, with even supposed "insiders" complaining of having been shut out of the process. Then, over the weekend, the Department of Labor held a...
Letters from the Workers' Compensation Trenches
I am just back from an invigorating seminar put on by the national group to which we belong as the sole Maine member, the National Workers' Compensation Defense Network and want to share some highlights. This year's seminar, held in Chicago on September 22, included presentations on lots of...
Will The New Maine Opiate Control Law Impact the Workers’ Compensation System?
Stories of the horrors of opiate over-prescription and abuse are abundant, and Maine has not been spared the ravages of that epidemic. In response to the growing problem, Governor LePage, in April of this year, signed into law a bill intended to place some limits on the prescription of...
When Pain and Suffering is Anything But
In Massachusetts, as in many states, when an employee is injured in the course of work, but the injury is caused by a third party, the employee is entitled to receive workers' compensation benefits and also seek damages from the third party. For example, employee Ernie is driving the...
WWE “Wrestles” with the Question of Whether Road Warrior Animal was an Employee or Independent Contractor
The issue of Independent Contractor versus Employee has reared its ugly head once again, this time in the context of professional wrestling. A Connecticut lawsuit filed on behalf of retired wrestlers is seeking damages from World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. for head injuries, alleged to have been sustained in the...
Co-Workers with Zenefits
Apparently it is going to be a lot less fun to work at Zenefits, a health insurance brokerage start-up, than it used to be. A month ago, David Sacks, the aptly named CEO of Zenefits, banned alcohol in the workplace. Apparently, occasionally co-workers would gather in the office to...
CDC Issues Opioid Guidelines
On March 18, the CDC finally issued much-anticipated guidelines for the prescription of opioids in chronic pain management "outside of active cancer treatment, palliative care, and end-of-life care." Over-prescription of opioids in the realm of workers' compensation has long been an issue of national importance. 47,055 lethal drug overdoses...
I'll Take a Double - Or The Danger of the Double-Recovery Provision under Medicare Secondary Payer Statute
Many of you are aware of the Medicare Secondary Payer Act, or MSP. It was enacted to stop cost-shifting from a third party who is responsible for payment of medical costs onto Medicare. We see this issue arise in workers' compensation when an employer/insurer contests responsibility for medical treatment...
Dear John, Number Two
Loyal blog readers may recall our post last August reporting on an Ohio company that required its workers to swipe into and out of the restroom at work , so as to monitor the amount of time spent on bathroom breaks. Predictably, that policy was not one tolerated by...
Walking Home From Our House Christmas Eve: "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" and Work-Related Injuries When Coming and Going from Work
We're all familiar with the holiday tune that recounts Grandma's unfortunate encounter with Santa and his reindeer. She's found the next day with "hoof prints on her forehead/And incriminating Claus marks on her back". Sadly, if Grandma were your employee and the accident happened in a location that can...
