Off The Record – Workers’ Comp – Occupational Disease

Video Transcript

Hi, everyone. My name is Craig Rosasco, senior partner at the law firm of Turley Redmond and Rosasco. Today we’re going to talk about occupational disease and repetitive stress injuries. What are occupational disease claims and repetitive stress injuries? Typically, a paralegal will suffer from repetitive stress injuries in the workplace because they’re repetitively typing. Or a client may be digging ditches all day and he doesn’t have a specific accident, but as a result of digging all day long he develops lower back problems. Where else do we see it? Going up and down ladders, people will develop ankle problems or knee problems.

Now good and bad with repetitive stress injuries is that because there’s no accident, most insurance companies will initially deny these claims. And what must you do? You’re going to notify your employer of the accident and then you’re going to have to get medical from a doctor giving a history of what you’ve done for work. So, what I typically tell my clients is, all right, you work full time, 40 hours a week, been typing for the last six years and you do 90% of your time as typing, that’s going to develop a repetitive problem. You got to show the repetitiveness of your job. If you’re typing 5% of the day it’s not really going to work out.

So what you’re going to need in a medical report is Mary Jo is a paralegal for the law firm of Turley Redmond and Rosasco for the last 10 years. She works full time, 40 hours a week, and she devotes 90% of her time on computers and uses her hands repetitively. As a result of that, she’s developed carpal tunnel syndrome and I believe her carpal tunnel syndrome is directly related to her work activities. Once you have that, you have sufficient medical evidence to move forward with the claim. At that point, I would certainly file a C3 with the workers’ compensation board and start slugging it out with the insurance company. Because these cases are routinely denied and that’s why you’re going to require my services. So if you’re in this type of situation feel free to give me a call. 516-745-5666. We’ll speak to you soon.