Education Worker Injury Compensation Board to Launch Oct. 1
- The Public Education Employee Injury Compensation Board (PEEICB), a new Alabama state agency created by a 2025 law to administer workers’ compensation for teachers, support staff, bus drivers and cafeteria workers, is on pace to meet its Oct. 1 deadline to begin accepting on-the-job injury claims, according to board members.
- The Board is being formed to unburden Alabama’s education sector workers, who, unlike other state employees or workers in the private sector, do not currently have access to workers’ compensation coverage. They are required to pay out of pocket for medical bills related to their injury and seek reimbursement from the state Board of Adjustment after the fact.
- The board has already approved administrative rules, named 11 attorneys to serve as hearing officers, selected a five-person review board to hear claim, and formally approved Birmingham-based Millennium Risk Managers as its third-party administrator under a $6.23 million contract running from August 1, 2026, to July 31, 2028.
- Ammons estimated roughly 104,000 employees will be eligible for coverage under the program, but said the board does not yet know how many claims to expect, and a December 2025 fiscal note projected startup and first-year costs of at least $15.6 million.
Court Upholds Dismissal of Workers’ Comp Retaliation Claim
- The Texas Thirteenth Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal of a nursing assistant’s workers’ compensation retaliation and negligence claims against Cimarron Place Health & Rehabilitation Center after she failed to meet a court clerk’s deadline for correcting an improperly formatted electronic filing.
- The worker alleged she was injured in April 2022 after colliding with a resident-operated wheelchair during a power outage at the facility, and sued for negligence, gross negligence, premises liability, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and retaliation for seeking workers’ compensation benefits.
- She electronically submitted her petition on April 9, 2024, two days before the two-year limitations period expired, but the Nueces County district clerk returned the filing twice for formatting issues and gave her until April 18 to correct and resubmit it. She did not resubmit until May 20.
- Because Texas’ electronic filing rules require compliance with a clerk’s correction deadline to preserve the original filing date, the court affirmed dismissal of all claims made by the nursing assistant.
Court: Wrong Carrier’s Attorney Appearance Costs Insurer Its Defenses and Right to Appeal
- In Rivera v. Lettire Construction Corp., New York’s Third Department affirmed a workers’ compensation claim for injuries from a ladder fall was compensable on default after confusion between two similarly named carriers, Starr Indemnity & Liability Company and Starr Specialty Insurance, led to a series of procedural missteps.
- After the Workers’ Compensation Board corrected the carrier of record from Indemnity to Specialty, an attorney appeared at hearings representing Helmsman (Specialty’s third-party administrator) but not Specialty itself, leading the Law Judge to penalize Specialty for non-appearance and find it had waived all defenses.
- Indemnity, not Specialty, filed the initial appeal to the Board Panel, and when Specialty later attempted to appeal directly to the Third Department, the court dismissed the appeal because Specialty had failed to exhaust the required administrative appeal process first.
- As a result, Specialty remains responsible for the claim on a default basis and lost its right to appeal, underscoring the importance of confirming the correct carrier name and running a Board coverage search whenever there is any doubt about carrier identity.