There’s an insurance industry radio ad campaign currently running, containing the following warning: Don’t commit Workers’ Comp insurance fraud or you’ll end up in jail and you will shame your family. It’s clearly aimed at injured workers. I get it.

What the public generally does NOT see is the other side of the coin…when insurance companies overstep their bounds and infringe on injured workers’ rights (happens all the time—sometimes with bad results, especially when injured workers are unrepresented .)
This happened to my client and me YESTERDAY:
My client, a nurse’s aide, was receiving weekly Workers’ Comp checks for a severe back injury (she now needs surgery for it) that she incurred at work. At the last hearing, the insurance company attorney for the employer accused my client of fraud and told the Judge they were stopping her benefits because they have a private eye who followed her and videotaped her doing something bad (presumably, working while collecting comp checks.) They were ordered to produce the investigator and his evidence. My client flatly denied committing fraud. A mild-mannered woman, she has been beside herself with stress because of this fraud allegation. She could not understand it. Luckily, in this country, you get to face your accuser in court, face-to-face. At the next hearing (yesterday) , I made a simple request: call in both my client and the investigator into the courtroom and let the investigator look at my client, face-to-face. When they were called in, the Judge asked the private eye: “Is this the woman you have been following?” The investigator turned red. ” No, Your Honor, it isn’t, “we must have been following the wrong person.”
You simply can’t make this stuff up. I got my client’s benefits reinstated (she was crying with relief, she could not understand what she had done wrong) but unfortunately there is no penalty against an insurance company for such shoddy work and behavior……………
Call us if you have questions about Workers’ Comp or Social Security Disability benefits!