Need advice - WC injury?

catherinetnc

Employee in Il on lunch hour. Had auto wreck during lunch, was injured.

After the wreck he told our HR manager he was on lunch break. Told another he was coming in to work to get his check. Either way, WC was not filed at the time.

He has retained a lawyer to apply for benefits to IL Worker's comp commision. Do we turn this over to our WC insurers at this point or do we defend ourselves? Don't know if he has changed his story to add that he was on business at time of wreck - can't think of any other reason he'd file the WC claim.

Thanks for any advice -

NeedCoffee

This is just my opinion, but unless you normally pay employees for time spent traveling to and from work, this is not a WC issue. If the EE was at lunch, does he have to clock in or out? If this was non compensable time and he wasn't driving for the sole purpose of travel between 2 or more jobsites, I don't see any way this could be a valid claim.

Of course, that doesn't stop him from making a claim, but my gut tells me you are OK on this. I would give this info to your WC carrier - we had a similar situation recently and our WC carrier responded to the claim, stating that under applicable laws, this is not a WC injury therefore no liability is assumed on behalf of the employer. If you have a good relationship with your claims manager, you may want to give him/her a call and just run it by them. Remember, you pay them premiums to take care of you in situations like this.

Good luck!

HR In NH

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 11-14-06 AT 03:23PM (CST)[/font][br][br]I agree - if he was on lunch and doing nothing work-related for the company, then this is not workers' comp. Since he has involved an attorney (and therefore might be beyond the step of just educating him to WC facts), I would report the "claim" to your WC carrier and let them handle denying it. He can always appeal, but usually they don't bother. Attorneys in employment/WC cases are generally paid on a contingency basis, so if they don't see a decent chance of collecting, they drop the case.

E Wart

By all means, call your w/c carrier right away and report exactly as you had been told earlier. Let them make the decision as to it being w/c compensible or not. Make sure you use the term "alledged" or something like that to trigger that you want it investigated. Then, once it has been assigned, call the w/c claim rep and talk with them personally. They may need to take statements from the 2 people he talked with.
Sounds to me like he has an attorney for auto insurance reasons (to sue the other driver), but I may be mistaken. You never know what might happen. By the way, was this in a company car or does he drive for company business (other than just coming to and from work.)?
E Wart