News Digest 11-16-2020

 

Flash: Cal/OSHA Rushes Thru Emergency COVID Regs

The Standards Board will vote soon on this extensive set of rules. Here is the proposed regulation and how you can weigh in – but you’d better do it quickly because the vote is just about here. Workers’ Comp Executive

 

Family of nurse settles case against Kansas City hospital

The family of a registered nurse at Research Medical Center in Kansas City who died after contracting COVID-19 has settled its workers’ compensation claim against the hospital. Although Missouri enacted an emergency rule in April allowing firemen, police and other first responders to receive workers’ comp if they are diagnosed with COVID-19 or are quarantined because of the disease, the rule did not cover hospital employees. KCUR

 

Does workers’ comp cover truckers’ COVID-19 infections?

Since the coronavirus outbreak, more than a dozen states have made some modifications to their workers’ compensation laws, presuming front-line employees (nurses, doctors, etc.) contracted the virus on the job. Others have not. How do truckers show the were infected while on the job, but not at the grocery store or from the handle of a gas station pump? Attorney Brad Klepper discusses. Overdrive

 

Rhode Island tree company deemed employer for workers’ comp exclusivity

A Coventry, Rhode Island tree removal company was a plaintiff’s employer at the time of a worksite accident and is immune from a personal injury suit consistent with the state’s Workers’ Compensation Act, the Rhode Island Supreme Court has ruled. Rhode Island Lawyers Weekly [may require registration]


Over half of Hawaii’s workers’ comp COVID-19 claims initially denied

Nationally, employees have struggled to prove that COVID-19 is qualified as a workplace injury, according to an investigation by FairWarning. In Hawaii, more than 55 percent of 425 workers’ compensation claims initially were denied pending investigations, according to the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations. Honolulu Civil Beat