The attorneys at Grazian and Volpe has dedicated their practice to both workers’ compensation and personal injury law for over 25 years. The coordination of these practices has allowed us to maximize settlement recoveries and negotiate minimum liens on all cases. Please join us on Facebook and on WCIU, You and Me in the Morning for more information on how you can assure maximum recovery whether you are a lawyer or client.
Personal injury attorneys and workers’ compensation lawyers should be aware of the potential pitfalls created by the existence of both causes of actions resulting from a single accident. Careful coordination of the workers’ compensation and third-party personal injury claims will often result in increased net recovery for the catastrophically injured client. Lawyers should have a working knowledge of their state’s workers’ compensation subrogation law-although this area of law is primarily statutory and varies widely from state to state, the strategies for getting a workers’ comp carrier to reduce its lien are the same in most jurisdictions.
There is a growing state trend to terminate future workers’ comp benefits if the worker fails to obtain the employer’s consent to the third-party settlement. Where the client will need lifetime medical treatment a lawyer needs to obtain the workers’ comp carrier’s consent and waiver of termination of future benefits before accepting the third-party settlement proceeds. While this situation is most prevalent when the third party has state minimum insurance limits-lawyers should be cognizant of this trend in all cases.
