When the Workplace Overheats

Record Heat, Worker Safety, and the Compensation Question

The Algorithm Denied It

Artificial Intelligence, Claims Adjudication, and the Future of Due Process

Aggravation Counts in New Jersey

How a work injury to an arthritic knee can be fully compensable, even when the worker had a pre-existing degenerative condition.

Chevron Gone, Benefits Threatened

Two Years After Loper Bright: Workers' Compensation, the Administrative State, and a Coming Reckoning Over Social Security

Trenton Targets Workers' Compensation

Pending New Jersey Legislation and What It Means for Injured Workers

When Inflation Hits Workers’ Compensation

How a renewed inflationary cycle is reshaping premiums, medical delivery, and disability benefits across the U.S. workers' compensation system.

Medicaid Cuts: Workers' Compensation Pays?

Trump Administration's Medicaid Work Requirements May Shift Enormous Costs to Employers and Workers' Compensation Insurers

Discovery Delays Cost Defenses

An employer's dilatory discovery and silence regarding a motion to strike led the Appellate Division to affirm an order compelling knee-replacement surgery and to underscore that medical care cannot be delayed.

Medical Records Fees Reshape Claims

The cost of obtaining medical records in New Jersey workers’ compensation cases has been significantly restructured. Senate Bill 2253—signed into law by Governor Phil Murphy as P.L. 2022, c. 114, effective September 22, 2022—slashed the permissible fees that hospitals and licensed health care professionals may charge for copies of medical and billing records. Three years on, a January 5, 2026, regulatory amendment to N.J.A.C. 8:43G-15.3 has updated hospital licensing standards to bring administrative rules into full alignment with the statute, closing a gap that had persisted since 2011.

Hemp, Medicare, and Workers' Compensation

A federal district court in the District of Columbia has dismissed a challenge to a novel Medicare hemp-access program, ruling that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue. The decision in Smart Approaches to Marijuana v. Kennedy (D.D.C. May 22, 2026) has significant implications for healthcare providers, insurers, and workers' compensation practitioners navigating the rapidly evolving landscape of cannabis-related medical treatment.

NJ Workers’ Compensation: Profit Surge

An Analysis of Premiums, Profitability, and Trends from the NJCRIB 2025 Annual Report

Ebola: A Global Workers' Peril

A deadly new chapter in the decades-long struggle against Ebola has arrived. On May 16, 2026, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), its highest level of alarm, as the Bundibugyo virus (BVD) rapidly spread across northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and crossed the border into Uganda. With no approved vaccine and no targeted therapeutics, this rapidly spreading, often fatal hemorrhagic fever poses an urgent, underappreciated threat to workers around the globe, particularly those in healthcare settings.

When Refusing Surgery Is Reasonable

The NJ Appellate Division Affirms Increased Disability on a Reopener and a Full Fee Shift

SIF, PEOs, and Ethics

On May 13, 2026, the New Jersey workers' compensation bar gathered for the annual May Day Seminar, a three-hour intensive legal education covering some of the most pressing and financially consequential issues in the practice. The topics: the Second Injury Fund (SIF) credit debate, the chaos of PEO coverage litigation, and the ethics landmines embedded in the insurer/employer/attorney triangle. What follows is a practitioner's guide to the issues presented, the law as it now stands, and what you need to do about it.

Sexual Harassment Survives Dismissal

A federal court in New Jersey has issued a significant ruling at the intersection of employment discrimination law, workers' compensation, and workplace harassment. In Matthews v. United Airlines, Inc., Judge Brian R. Martinotti of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey denied, in substantial part, defendants' motion to dismiss, allowing a flight ramp employee's claims of sexual harassment, hostile work environment, and retaliation to proceed under both Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (NJLAD). The decision carries important implications for workers in New Jersey who suffer harassment on the job and then find themselves further victimized by retaliatory termination.

Single Payer’s Workers’ Compensation Gamble

For more than a decade, this blog has tracked what I have called “The Path to Federalization,” the steady, incremental expansion of federal authority over what was once an exclusively state-run workers’ compensation system. From the World Trade Center Health Program in 2010 to the Affordable Care Act’s Libby Care pilot, from Supreme Court validation of the individual mandate in 2012 to the Medicare Secondary Payer offset debate, each chapter has added a new stone to that path. California’s 2026 gubernatorial race is laying the boldest stone yet.

Virus on Board: Are We Ready?

Hantavirus, the Andes Strain, and the Workers' Compensation System's Preparedness for Person-to-Person Infectious Disease Outbreaks

New Jersey's ABC Test Gets Official Rules

New Jersey's Department of Labor and Workforce Development has adopted N.J.A.C. 12:11, a sweeping new set of rules that codify how the state's nearly 90-year-old ABC test is applied to determine whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor. This is a landmark development for workers' compensation practitioners, employers, and every worker performing services in the Garden State.

OSHA Violations: Workers’ Compensation Impact

A willful OSHA violation is serious, but in New Jersey, it is not a magic key that unlocks the door to civil litigation against an employer. Over a decade after the New Jersey Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Van Dunk v. Reckson Associates Realty Corp., 210 N.J. 449 (2012), that foundational principle remains firmly in place and continues to shape how injured workers, employers, and practitioners navigate the intersection of OSHA enforcement and the workers’ compensation system.

Marijuana Rescheduled: Workers' New Rights

The Trump Administration has made history. On April 23, 2026, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed an order immediately placing both FDA-approved products containing marijuana and marijuana products regulated by a state medical marijuana license in Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act.