Workers’ Compensation

Workers’ Compensation

In conjunction with the labor and employment relations aspects of our practice, we administer, manage and defend workers’ compensation claims on behalf of management. To aid our clients in achieving positive economic results, our legal and paralegal staff provide a comprehensive risk management program which consists of claims administration and an aggressive defense program.

Each of our clients is assigned an attorney and a paralegal to service the account directly. The attorney and paralegal become intimately involved in the company’s claims history and its day-to-day workers’ compensation protocol and activities. By focusing and limiting their practice to workers’ compensation matters, our attorneys and paralegals have developed highly effective levels of expertise. In addition, they have established a working rapport with those who administer the claims at both the Bureau of Workers’ Compensation and Industrial Commission.

Our practice includes representation in all aspects of workers’ compensation defense for both state-funded and self-insured clients throughout the state of Ohio. This includes representing employers: Workers’ compensation audits to determine how our clients can minimize injury-related costs and liabilities; all Industrial Commission and Bureau of Workers’ Compensation proceedings concerning the full gamut of injury and occupational disease issues; VSSR (“Violation of Specific Safety Requirement”) actions both through the investigation stage and at hearing; O.R.C. 4123.512 Court of Common Pleas appeals; BWC handicap reimbursement proceedings; and the Bureau Adjudicating Committee process. Throughout all of these facets of our workers’ compensation practice, we are involved in establishing defense parameters with third party administrators (“TPAs”), and most importantly, in formulating long term strategies with our employer clients, in order to defend cases aggressively, while managing workers’ compensation costs effectively.

Further, we have specifically developed a niche in organizing and representing clients through Group Rating Programs, which allow substantially similar employers to “pool” together to achieve lower premium rates than they could otherwise acquire as individual employers.