How Can Someone Lose Their Benefits?
You risk losing your workers’ compensation benefits if you do not follow the legal procedures required in workers’ compensation cases or if there is strong evidence that you are not being truthful about your injuries.
The goal of workers’ compensation laws is to enable employees injured at work to receive medical treatment for work-related injuries at no cost to the employee and without the employee having to go through a personal injury lawsuit to receive compensation. Therefore, filing a workers’ compensation claim and receiving treatment and, if applicable, disability benefits should be a straightforward process. Certain mistakes, however, can cause injured workers to miss out on workers’ compensation benefits or to lose their benefits even after they have started receiving them. A Nebraska workers’ compensation lawyer can help you avoid issues that undermine your credibility in a workers’ compensation case.
You Wait Too Long to Report a Workers’ Compensation Claim
You should report your injury to your employer as soon as it happens, even if it takes some time to file all the workers’ compensation paperwork. If you wait to inform your employer of a possible work injury, there is room for your employer’s insurance company to argue that the work accident is not the true cause of your injury. Workers’ compensation insurance companies try to get out of paying for your treatment by denying their responsibility for your injuries, just like car insurance companies do with car accident claims. Therefore, reporting your injury promptly is important for similar reasons to the reasons for getting examined at a hospital immediately after a car accident.
You Refuse Medical Treatment
Just as not immediately providing notice leaves your employer’s workers’ compensation insurance room to argue that your injury is not work-related, so does denying medical treatment. If you refuse treatment at first but then your symptoms get worse, it will be hard to get workers’ comp to step in when you need it.
You Leave Room for Doubt About the Nature and Cause of Your Injuries
Case law tells of employees who pretended that their injuries were more serious than they were in order to get more money from workers’ compensation or to delay going back to work. Of course, you are not lying about your injuries, but you should not give workers’ comp a chance to doubt you. Do not post pictures of your vacation on Facebook during a time when you were out of work recovering from your injuries and receiving workers’ compensation benefits for it.
Contact Andres Law Offices, PC LLO, About Keeping Your Workers’ Compensation Benefits
A Nebraska workers’ compensation lawyer can help you if you are involved in a dispute with your employer over your workers’ compensation benefits. Contact Andres Law Offices, PC LLO in Omaha, Nebraska, about your case.