Restaurant Owner Blames Insurance Agent for Coverage Lapses

blame

Solomon Sade, owner of the restaurant Westport, Connecticut-based Baxter & The Blondinit, blamed his insurance broker for lapses in the business’s workers’ compensation coverage and said he had canceled checks to support his claim, according to an arrest warrant. He did not provide the documentation and later told investigators his lawyer would be “taking care of everything.”
Sade was charged with two counts of failure to comply with insurance requirements, after a joint investigation by the Office of the Chief State’s Attorney and the state Department of Labor. He was released on a $10,000 bond after his Oct. 15 arrest and is scheduled to be arraigned in Stamford Superior Court Oct. 29.
The warrant says the restaurant’s policy was canceled for nonpayment of premium effective June 25, 2024, and Sade paid more than 30 employees from that date through Dec. 31, 2024. The restaurant obtained a new policy Jan. 14, 2025, but had failed to report employee wages to the Department of Labor before Jan. 9, 2025.
When investigators returned May 21, 2026, they found Sade paying more than 15 employees since March 26, 2026, a date on which the insurer had again canceled the policy for nonpayment. A new policy was obtained five days later.

The Tennessee Court of Workers’ Compensation Claims ordered Amazon to immediately schedule an injured warehouse worker a return visit with his original treating physician, after the court found Amazon was seeking an opinion that his temporary disability was not caused by a workplace injury that he suffered in April 2024.
The worker hurt his lower back lifting heavy items in April 2024 and a treating physician said he’d reached maximum medical improvement a year later. He was released to work with no restrictions and Amazon stopped paying temporary disability benefits four days later. A panel physician later diagnosed sacroiliac joint pain and assigned restrictions that Amazon did not accommodate.
In making its ruling the court cited a causation letter Amazon sent to the provider who had ordered the worker’s MRI. The letter attached a 2022 record from a different doctor about a prior injury and asked whether the impairment was zero percent, rather than whether the provider agreed with the existing rating.
The worker lost on temporary disability benefits. The court said no physician since the April 2025 finding had connected his condition to the workplace injury or stated a duration of disability, so he had not met his burden of proof.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled Oct. 19 that Section 43 of the state’s Administrative Workers’ Compensation Act allows workers’ compensation carriers to recover death benefits they have paid from a share of wrongful death settlements. The court vacated both lower court rulings and remanded the case to the trial court.
The case arose from a March 2018, head-on crash on the Roosevelt Bridge that killed a Rent-A-Center employee. Sentinel Insurance, the employer’s carrier, paid death benefits to the employee’s spouse and minor child, then intervened in the family’s suit against the at-fault driver in Bryan County District Court to recoup from the settlement or judgment the death benefits it had paid.
The family argued the statute violated Article 23, Section 7 of the Oklahoma Constitution, which says the right of action for wrongful death “shall never be abrogated.” The trial court agreed, and the Court of Civil Appeals reversed.
The high court held that Section 43(A) gives an employer or carrier a first lien on two-thirds of net proceeds after collection costs and that the lien applies in death-benefit cases, not just injury cases, resolving a question that had lacked definitive state-court authority for more than a decade. Seven justices fully joined the opinion, one concurred in the result only and one did not participate. The underlying wrongful death action has not been decided on the merits.