Court Upholds TTD Award for Worker Despite Being Cleared to Full Duty
- New Jersey’s Appellate Division affirmed an award of temporary total disability benefits to a former Costco employee who injured his right knee in January 2022 helping a customer lift a generator, even though his authorized surgeon, Dr. Daniel Richmond, had cleared him to return to full-duty work.
- Munoz resigned in September 2022 after his knee repeatedly swelled and caused severe pain during and after shifts. The workers’ compensation court found his stated “personal reasons” for leaving actually stemmed from the injury, rejecting Costco’s argument that his resignation was voluntary and unrelated to his work injury.
- The court credited the opinions of Dr. Gerardo Goldberger and court-appointed neutral surgeon Dr. Frederick Song, who found the arthroscopic surgery aggravated Munoz’s pre-existing patellofemoral degenerative joint disease, over Dr. Richmond’s opinion that the injury didn’t aggravate the pre-existing condition, finding Dr. Richmond’s testimony inconsistent and less credible.
- Citing Harbatuk v. S & S Furniture Systems Insulation, the court held that an employer must offer light-duty work to terminate temporary disability benefits, and since Costco failed to provide the light duty Munoz requested or further treatment after his surgeon discharged him, he was entitled to TTD benefits retroactive to his resignation date until returned to full duty by Dr. Song, who is now his court-ordered treating physician ahead of a planned knee replacement.
AG Creates Unit to Investigate Wage Theft, Worker Misclassification
- Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones has created a new worker protection unit within his office that will work alongside the Department of Labor and Industry to investigate worker complaints involving wage theft, retaliation, and employee misclassification.
- The Department of Labor and Industry’s most recent annual report showed it received over 1,600 unpaid wage complaints, a 64% increase, and recovered more than $645,000 for workers.
- Jones said the unit is intended to give the state “some teeth” to pursue bad actors on issues including underpayment, misclassification and unsafe working conditions.
- The state budget allocated $500,000 to establish the unit, which will start with three staff members, though Jones said he hopes to expand it over time.
Study: Medical Utilization, Severity Rises with Worker Wages
- A new NCCI report found that medical utilization and medical severity in lost-time workers’ compensation claims increase as injured workers’ wages rise, with higher-wage workers earning more than 150% of the state’s average weekly wage using about 1.6 times the medical utilization of lower-wage workers earning less than 50% of the SAWW, and experiencing roughly 1.5 times the medical severity.
- The study found this correlation is driven primarily by the intensity of medical services provided rather than differences in pricing, and it holds consistently across age groups, industries, jurisdictions, and even specific NCCI class codes within the same industry.
- Higher-wage workers are less likely to file less-serious claims and are about twice as likely to undergo major surgery compared to lower-wage workers, putting upward pressure on costs for professional services, facility care, prescription drugs, and medical equipment.
- The report builds on NCCI’s earlier “Navigating Medical Severity and Claim Outcomes” presentation and its research on the relationship between benefits and wages, aiming to help stakeholders more accurately project medical utilization, claim outcomes, and overall claim costs.