W.Va. Court Denies Bid to Expand Claim

A worker’s request to expand his workers’ compensation claim for a back injury has been denied by the West Virginia Supreme Court.
In Gregory v. Raleigh County Board of Education, plaintiff Ken Gregory alleged he suffered a back injury in January 2023.
He sought to expand his original claim to include lumbar degeneration, lumbar spine instability, lumbar radiculopathy, and lumbar spondylosis in the workers’ compensation claim as a compensable condition.
Gregory asserted that the evidence reveals that he was previously satisfactorily completing his job duties, but, after the compensable injury, he could no longer perform his job due to the new symptoms he was having.
That bid was rejected by the West Virginia Workers’ Compensation Board of Review; a lower court upheld the Board’s decision.
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Ontario businesses will see a further reduction in the average premium rate for 2026, dropping to $1.23 CAD per $100 of insurable payroll from $1.25 in 2025, according to the province’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB).
“This reduction to WSIB’s average premium rate – the lowest in over 50 years – will save businesses $60 million to reinvest in health and safety improvements, stay competitive and strengthen our economy,” said David Piccini, minister of labour, immigration, training and skills development.
This is the seventh premium rate reduction in 10 years, with the average rate now more than 50% lower than in 2017.
Over the past decade, WSIB premium reductions and surplus distributions have resulted in $21.5 billion in cumulative savings for Ontario businesses, while coverage and services have expanded, according to the agency.
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A new report emphasizes the importance of cannabis operators acknowledging the well-known hierarchy of occupational safety and health controls and implementing appropriate responses to address work-related asthma.
While it is impossible to eliminate any hazards from cannabis itself, it is possible to eliminate certain other hazards, such as exposure to disinfectants, and to minimize exposure to mold, according to findings from California, Massachusetts, Michigan and Washington, published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
Using data from the four state-based surveillance systems, work-related asthma cases within the cannabis industry were identified and classified as new-onset asthma or work-aggravated asthma.
A number of inter-related issues may appear all at once for a cannabis employer, according to the report.
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