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Showing posts with label Administrative law judge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Administrative law judge. Show all posts

Thursday, February 6, 2014

No Judges, No Justice

The LHWCA covers claims for longshoremen and shipbuilding and repair workers.
Today's post comes from guest author Jay Causey, from Causey Law Firm.

Some months ago, I reported about a slowdown in the processing of claims under the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act and allied statutes.  The LHWCA was enacted in 1927, and through amendments over the years has been broadened to include injury and disease claims for longshoremen and shipbuilding and repair workers. Expansion of the program in 1941 resulted in the Defense Base Act, covering employees of military contractors working abroad. With our ten-year presence in Afghanistan and Iraq, a large cohort of injured workers has fallen under the DBA in recent years.
Underfunding of ALJ positions within the Department of Labor routinely results in long delays for the hearing and decision making in claims, often meaning claimants are without any coverage for years.
In another segment of its Breathless and Burdened report (subsequent to the one I recently posted about, concerning how black lung victims are routinely having their claims denied as a result of coal company-sponsored evaluations at Johns Hopkins), the Center for Public integrity has now reported on the extreme reduction of the number of administrative law judges within the US Department of Labor who hear and decide claims under the LHWCA and DBA. The center reports that the number of ALJ’s, nationwide, it has fallen to 35, from 41 earlier in 2013 and 53 a decade ago. This has occurred in the context of a 68% rise of new cases before the office of administrative law judges, and 134% increase in pending cases.
Underfunding of ALJ positions within the Department of Labor routinely results in long delays for the hearing and decision making in claims, often meaning claimants are without any coverage for years. Longshore and military contractor employers and their insurance companies, knowing that the adjudicative process in contested claims has become ridiculously long, are emboldened to sit on monies that are clearly owed to injured workers.  In addition to the injustice to entitled injured workers resulting from this administrative chaos, to the extent that an injured workers medical benefits and indemnity payments are pushed to other systems, such as Medicare, Social Security, and state disability systems, the costs of the Longshore system are shifted to the federal tax payer and away from the employers and their carriers who should appropriately bear the burden.
Read about the specifics of particular cases in the Center’s report here.

Photo credit: Markus Brinkmann / Foter.com / CC BY-SA

Saturday, December 28, 2013

Social Security - Administrative Law Judge Rulings

ALJ Disposition Data
FY 2014 (For Reporting Purposes: 09/28/2013 Through 11/29/2013)
A listing of hearings completion data by name of individual administrative law judges (ALJ) for all ALJs in ODAR. The data includes hearing office name, total dispositions, decisions, allowances, denials and fully favorable or partially favorable decisions.
Click here to down oad the data in PDF format.
Found on
Tembow….

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

The Aggressor Rule Sometimes Makes Good Sense

In some jurisdictions, the one who initiates an assault is denied workers' compensation benefits. In others, it is not a bar to a claim as in California. One would expect that yet another change will be coming to the law in California. One would think that the conduct of this police officer gives rise to rethinking the concept of compensability. Today's post is shared from davisenterprise.com

The University of California and the former police officer who pepper-sprayed Occupy UC Davis protesters have reached a workers’ compensation settlement totaling $38,059.

John Pike, 40, of Roseville, suffered depression and anxiety brought on by death threats to him and his family that followed the Nov. 18, 2011, confrontation at an encampment on the Quad.

Administrative Law Judge Harter approved the settlement agreement on Oct. 16.

“This case has been resolved in accordance with state law and processes on workers’ compensation,” university spokesman Andy Fell said in an email message. Pike’s Sacramento attorney, Jason Marcus, declined to comment on Wednesday.

Bernie Goldsmith, a Davis attorney supportive of the student protesters, called it “interesting to see a dollars-and-cents compensation for universal revilement.”

“This sends a clear message to the next officer nervously facing off with a group of passive, unarmed students: Go on ahead. Brutalize them. Trample their rights. You will be well taken care of,” Goldsmith said.

The state’s Disability Evaluation Unit determines permanent disability ratings based on doctors’ reports. Richard Lieberman, a Piedmont psychiatrist acting as the agreed-upon expert, rated Pike ’s disability as “moderate,” according to a Jan. 5 psychiatric report released by the State Department of Industrial Relations in response to a public records request.

Pike faced...


[Click here to see the rest of this post]

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Jon L. Gelman of Wayne NJ is the author NJ Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson) and co-author of the national treatise, Modern Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson). For over 4 decades the Law Offices of Jon L Gelman  1.973.696.7900  jon@gelmans.com  have been representing injured workers and their families who have suffered occupational accidents and illnesses.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

An Independent and Impartial Judiciary Is A Duty Owed The People

"...judicial independence is not for the judges, and it’s not for the lawyers; it’s for the people who come to court..." 
Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson, Wisconsin Supreme Court.

The US Judicial system is based on the cornerstone of the fairness, impartiality and absence of bias. Hearing official are charged with that obligation when they take their oath of office

The recent filing of a class action complaint in NY charging that a group of local Administrative Law Judges did not meet that responsibility is indeed shocking. 

See the complete NY Times reporthttp://tinyurl.com/3cfxs97