Once you begin receiving your workers’ compensation wage loss and medical benefits, it will only be a matter of time until your employer and their workers’ compensation carrier will take steps to try and stop your compensation benefits or try to settle your claim for a lump sum amount of money. You will likely need to negotiate a PA Workers’ Compensation. settlement. It is not a matter of if, it is a matter of when.
As time goes by, your employer and their workers’ compensation carrier will send you to undergo independent medical examinations and based on the reports from those examinations will attempt to modify, suspend, or terminate your wage loss and medical benefits. It is important to understand that if they are not successful the first time around with the litigation before a workers’ compensation judge, they will keep trying until they are successful or want you to settle your case altogether. Rather than risk losing benefits, many PA injured workers opt to settle their case.
At Robinson Law LLC, we are vastly experienced and take pride in our negotiating skills to ensure that your rights are protected and that you receive the highest settlement amount for your case. Paula Robinson has been negotiate workers’ compensation settlements and helping workers’ compensation clients for over three decades and is a Pennsylvania Certified Workers’ Compensation attorney.
How are PA workers’ compensation cases resolved?
The answer is through Compromise and Release (C&R) settlements. This is a one-time settlement for a lump sum of money that resolves typically both wage loss and medical benefits. The Compromise and Release Agreement is held before a workers’ compensation judge at a hearing. If the assigned judge approves the C&R Agreement, your workers’ compensation case is terminated, and you cannot come back to your employer or their workers’ compensation carrier for any additional monies. If the resolution also is for medical benefits, then no more medical bills will be paid for your accepted work injury. This is the end of the road for your workers’ compensation case.
If you decide that you would like to try to settle your workers’ compensation case, it is important to have an experienced workers’ compensation attorney represent you for the negotiating and resolving of your case, including representing you at the C&R hearing. Your attorney should include you in every step of the negotiating. Not only will your injury and your weekly workers’ compensation rate be considered, but also your age, how long ago your injury took place, your ability or inability to return to some type of work, your work history and abilities outside of work. Keep in mind that your attorney’s job is to get you the maximum amount of money possible for your particular case.
While most workers’ compensation carriers want to settle cases in their entirety, meaning for both the wage loss and medicals, there are some situations in which a portion of the medicals can be left open for a period of time, and in rare cases, totally open with no end date. An example of this scenario is as follows. Say you are an injured worker who is on workers’ compensation, and you have multiple injuries that you are still treating for; the case could settle for a lump sum of money with open medical on one or more of the injuries, closing out the rest of the injuries.
How and when your case settles is really up to you, the workers’ compensation carrier, and your attorney. Choose an experienced workers’ compensation attorney who has done many, many settlements to maximize your own settlement.
