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

Found on

Related articles

• Sequester Whacks Injured Workers (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• How Corporate Money Poisons "Independent" Medical Evaluations (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Does the Media Comprehend the Tragedy of Mass Worker Death? (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• The High Price of Gas - Mileage Reimbursement for Injured Workers (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• In Detroit Ruling, Threats to Promises and Assumptions (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Klickitat County Lumber Company Fined (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Substantial Credible Evidence Remains the Rule (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• The High Price of Gas - Mileage Reimbursement for Injured Workers (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)

Coal industry pays lawyers, doctors to lie and let workers to die penniless

Today's post is shared from workerscomphub.org Photo by Earl DotterIn a devastating must-read set of reports, the Center for Public Integrity and ABC News describe how coal companies have fought a cutthroat campaign of secrecy, misinformation, false diagnoses, and defiance of court orders to stop workers from getting workers’ compensation for black lung disease. The coal industry’s tactics mirror those of Big Tobacco, the lead and soda industries, the NFL, and pulp and paper giant Georgia-Pacific, which is conducting secret research and selectively withholding information to cast doubt on more than 60,000 legal claims filed by construction workers and others who Georgia-Pacific exposed to asbestos in the 1960s and ‘70s and are developing mesothelioma, a cancer nearly always caused by asbestos, today. Black lung, a disease caused by inhaling coal dust over time, scars and shrinks the lungs and can be highly debilitating and deadly. In its severe form, black lung is supposed to automatically qualify miners for workers’ compensation. Yet in a series of three in-depth reports, the Center for Public Integrity reveals how the coal industry and its lawyers have fought tooth and nail to hide information on workers’ health from doctors, courts, and patients themselves in order to maintain doubt about people's’ eligibility for compensation. ABC News interviewed Dr. Paul Wheeler, head of The Johns Hopkins Hospital’s black...

[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Found on

Related articles

• Georgia-Pacific Reports Show Corporations Can't Be Trusted (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• The Next Wave: N.H.L. Players Sue League Over Head Injuries (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• John Burton Reports on Workers' Compensation Insurance Industry Underwriting Results (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• California Workers' Compensation Rates Going Up in 2014 (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Johns Hopkins medical unit rarely finds black lung, helping coal industry defeat miners' claims (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Workers' Compensation Board hosts meetings to help improve services (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)

Georgia-Pacific Reports Show Corporations Can't Be Trusted

Exposure to asbestos is known to cause cancers, such as mesothelioma and lung cancer. Despite the knowledge that asbestos companies had decades ago of asbestos fiber, they continue to delay payments to victims and deny responsibility for the legacy of disease caused by exposures. Today's post was shared by Take Justice Back and comes from www.takejusticeback.com

Earlier this week, the Center for Public Integrity published an exposé detailing the deceptive research program Georgia-Pacific funded to avoid accountability for their asbestos-containing joint compound. For twelve years Georgia- Pacific produced both a paste and dry mix joint compound that used asbestos, exposing countless numbers of workers to the cancer causing substance. In 1978, the Consumer Product Safety Commission banned all asbestos- containing joint compound, a ban Georgia-Pacific supported at the time. However, asbestos-related diseases take decades to develop and it wasn’t until 2005 that Georgia-Pacific realized they may be held accountable for exposing workers to asbestos, a known carcinogen. At this point they developed a business plan: pay 18 scientists a collective $6 million dollars to produce reports favorable to the company. In total, Georgia-Pacific funded 13 articles that were published in scientific journals. According to the Center for Public Integrity, these reports used science that was questionable at best. For instance, an expert government panel endorsed an animal inhalation study set to last two years. However Georgia-Pacific paid scientists shortened the time frame from two years to five days, a period so brief the long lasting effects of asbestos could not properly be measured. Additionally, the research claimed to have been sponsored by a grant, but documents later proved Georgia-Pacific paid the equivalent of $850,000...

[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Found on

Related articles

• Facing lawsuits over deadly asbestos, paper giant launched secretive research program (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• The Toxic Cloud Over the US EPA (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Johnson & Johnson to Pay More Than $2.2 Billion to Resolve Criminal and Civil Investigatio (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Three more states report Cyclospora cases; total rises to 283 (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Avoidable Deaths from Heart Disease, Stroke, and Hypertensive Disease - United States, 2001 - 2010 (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Jenny Yang Sworn In as EEOC Commissioner Bipartisan Federal Agency Now at Full Strength (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• 12 Attacks On Workers' Rights That Will Make You Kinda Mad (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)

Johns Hopkins medical unit rarely finds black lung, helping coal industry defeat miners' claims

Today's post was shared by FairWarning and comes from www.publicintegrity.org

There is an unmistakable pattern in Wheeler’s readings. The Center identified more than 1,500 cases decided since 2000 in which Wheeler read at least one X-ray; in all, he interpreted more than 3,400 films during this time. The numbers show his opinions consistently have benefited coal companies: Wheeler rated at least one X-ray as positive in less than 4 percent of cases. Subtracting the cases in which he ultimately concluded another disease was more likely, this number drops to about 2 percent. In 80 percent of the X-rays he read as positive, Wheeler saw only the earliest stage of the disease. He never once found advanced or complicated black lung. Other readers, looking at the same images, saw these severe forms of the disease on more than 750 films. Where other doctors saw black lung, Wheeler saw tuberculosis, histoplasmosis or a similar disease on about 34 percent of X-rays. This number shoots up in cases in which others saw complicated black lung, which is so severe it triggers automatic compensation. In such cases, Wheeler attributed the masses in miners’ lungs to these other diseases on two-thirds of X-rays. Asked if he stood by this record, Wheeler said, “Absolutely.”