Archives for July 2016

Most people feel some level of stress at work. But what if your job exposes you to a high level of stress on a daily basis—maybe you’re a police officer, emergency room nurse or firefighter. Or suppose you witness a traumatic event at work—the serious injury or death of a co-worker, or an act of workplace violence, such as a shooting. Are you entitled to file for workers’ compensation benefits if the effects of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) make it difficult or impossible for you to do your job? The answer depends, but it’s clear that mental illness can be the basis for a workers’ compensation claim.

When you file for workers’ compensation benefits based on a mental illness, your claim will fall into one of three categories:

  • Physical-mental injuries
  • Mental-physical injuries
  • Mental-mental injuries

A physical-mental injury is one that is initially entirely physical, but ends up creating mental health challenges. For example, you might hurt your knee lifting boxes or performing some other task at work. If the knee doesn’t heal quickly, and you can’t maintain the active lifestyle you had before the injury, you may become depressed, and the depression can contribute to your inability to work.

A mental-physical injury works in exactly the opposite manner. You may be exposed, for example, to a high level of stress on your job, which in turn can elevate your blood pressure, or cause you to either gain or lose a lot of weight. High blood pressure or increased weight can put you at risk of stroke, heart attack or joint injury.

A mental-mental injury is one that starts with a psychological event and manifests with PTSD, such as witnessing a traumatic injury or act of violence.

Contact the Law Office of Taylor & Boguski

At Taylor & Boguski, we bring more than 70 years of combined legal experience to injured workers throughout New Jersey. For a free initial consultation, contact our office online or call us at 856-200-8989.

So you’ve been hurt at work—maybe you sprained your left knee unloading a truck—and you seek medical care for the knee sprain. Because of the pain and stiffness in your left knee, you naturally favor the left leg, putting additional stress on the right side of your body. Your knee gets better, but a couple weeks later, you wake up to terrible pain in your right heel. Your doctor diagnoses it as a heel spur, the result of changing your gait because of the injury to your left knee. Can you file for workers’ compensation benefits if the pain from the heel spur makes it impossible to do your job?

What we’re talking about here is what the law refers to as a “consequential” injury, i.e., one that is not immediately caused by a work accident, but arises only because of your work injury. Under workers’ compensation laws you have a right to file a claim for any injuries that can be shown to have “reasonably” been the result of a work-related injury. If you can bring in medical evidence to show that a subsequent injury (here, the heel spur) would not have happened “but for” the work accident, you can obtain workers’ compensation benefits for that injury.

Of course, the challenge, when an injury is not immediately apparent, is demonstrating that it resulted from the work accident. That’s one of the reasons it’s so important, when you see a doctor, to carefully describe everything that seems abnormal and to document every pain or injury. It’s a pretty common occurrence that injury to one part of the body will lead to overcompensation and injury somewhere else.

Contact Us

At Taylor & Boguski, we bring more than 70 years of combined legal experience to injured workers throughout New Jersey. For a free initial consultation, contact our office online or call us at 856-200-8989.