By: Russell Keener  —  July 20, 2011
 

The other day, sev­eral of the ded­i­cated staff mem­bers from the Keener Law Firm took a day off from assist­ing our won­der­ful clients to attend an edu­ca­tional event spe­cially orga­nized for pro­fes­sion­als who han­dle work injury claims. The event was orga­nized by the Geor­gia State Board of Work­ers’ Com­pen­sa­tion and should have been neu­tral. Mean­ing, the speak­ers were not sup­posed to speak “only” to the needs of employ­ers, insur­ers, and busi­nesses who try to limit, deny, and min­i­mize injury claims. Nor were they to speak “only” to peo­ple like us who rep­re­sent injured work­ers’ and want to see them com­pen­sated to the max­i­mum, fair amount allowed by law.

How­ever, the slant at the event quickly became evi­dent when the very first speaker took the podium and mocked a car­i­ca­ture of an injured worker. When all the HR reps and insur­ance adjusters seated around us snick­ered and twit­tered with glee at these cal­lous and insen­si­tive jokes, we real­ized we were in enemy territory.

We also real­ized some­thing else.

These folks spent an entire day at this con­fer­ence, where they were taught how to struc­ture their work­place processes and how to manip­u­late injury vic­tims to pay less in work­ers’ com­pen­sa­tion ben­e­fits to an employee or fam­ily of an employee who is injured or killed on the job. As a result of attend­ing this con­fer­ence and many oth­ers, the folks rep­re­sent­ing employ­ers and insur­ers have exten­sive train­ing in how to reduce com­pen­sa­tion to injured peo­ple. They have man­u­als that are lit­er­ally hun­dreds of pages long and filled with infor­ma­tion on how to reduce com­pen­sa­tion paid to injury vic­tims. They have lawyers on retainer, ready to advise them on how to pay less to some­one who has been injured. They have expe­ri­ence with prior claims, so they can reduce ben­e­fits on the next claim that comes across their desk.

In sum, the con­fer­ence served as a reminder of how the deck is stacked against the injured worker. The indi­vid­ual who is hurt on the job has prob­a­bly never dealt with the work­ers com­pen­sa­tion sys­tem before. He or she doesn’t have a man­ual of tips or tricks. He or she has no train­ing in the intri­cate work­ings of the Geor­gia Work­ers’ Com­pen­sa­tion Act.

No won­der so many work­ers are taken advan­tage of when they have been injured at work. They often look to their employer or human resources rep­re­sen­ta­tive and trust that per­son to do the right thing. They think:

I have given my heart and soul to this com­pany. I have given them my blood, sweat, and tears. Now I am injured. The least they can do is pay my med­ical bills and help me until I am able to return to the job.

Unfor­tu­nately, this sen­ti­ment is not often shared at the com­pany, where the bot­tom line takes prece­dence. As a result, the employee even­tu­ally comes to see that he or she has been too trust­ing and too accom­mo­dat­ing, to the detri­ment of his or her legal case and well-being. Some­times by then, it is too late to save the claim.

The same thing applies to auto­mo­bile acci­dents, injuries due to haz­ardous con­di­tions on busi­ness premises, and other types of per­sonal injury claims. The large insur­ance com­pa­nies make it part of their busi­ness model to deny, delay, and defend claims to increase their prof­its at the expense of injured vic­tims. They may deny that this is their prac­tice, but with at least one insurer, this prac­tice is writ­ten into their insur­ance claims han­dling man­ual. Seat­tle Per­sonal Injury Attor­ney, Bob Ander­ton, reviewed All­state Insur­ance Company’s 1995 claims han­dling man­ual and notes that All­state actu­ally teaches its claims rep­re­sen­ta­tives to manip­u­late and take advan­tage of unsus­pect­ing claimants who have not yet retained an attorney:

Allstate’s claims manual…contains role-playing guides on how to deal with peo­ple who are not rep­re­sented by attorneys.

It dis­cusses Allstate’s find­ings that “[claims in which the claimant is rep­re­sented by a lawyer] set­tle for 2–3 times more than unrep­re­sented claims.”

The inter­nal insur­ance claims han­dling doc­u­ments show that dis­cour­ag­ing peo­ple from seek­ing legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion saved the insur­ance com­pany lots of money. This money came at the expense of injury vic­tims. Bob Ander­ton high­lights the fol­low­ing excerpts from Allstate’s claims man­ual, and then com­ments on them:

• “Reg­u­lar follow-up claimant to reduce the need for attor­ney involvement.”
• “‘estab­lish a trust-based rela­tion­ship’ with the injured person.”
• “We will move…to more customer-focused goals such as % of claimants who remain unrepresented.”

All­state has care­fully crafted the move­ments of its “Good Hands.” Accord­ing to an inter­nal dis­cus­sion guide, “it is crit­i­cal that devi­a­tions from the rec­om­mended script are not advised”. Any insur­ance com­pany that set­tles thou­sands of claims a month under­stand­ably would want to do so as effi­ciently as pos­si­ble. This effi­ciency is rarely in the inter­est of the injured per­son, however.

With­out a good attor­ney, injured peo­ple do not have access to infor­ma­tion or the full power of the courts.

(empha­sis sup­plied). CNN has also reported on prob­lems per­sonal injury vic­tims have had recov­er­ing money legit­i­mately owed to them by insur­ance companies.

 

 

Expe­ri­enced Atlanta Per­sonal Injury Law Firm

For more than 20 years, the Acci­dent and Injury Lawyers at the Keener Law Firm have focused their prac­tice on rep­re­sent­ing indi­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies cat­a­stroph­i­cally injured or killed in all types of injury inci­dents, includ­ing auto acci­dents, motor­cy­cle acci­dents, truck­ing acci­dents, wrong­ful death, work injuries, elder abuse and neglect, mis­filled pre­scrip­tions, child day­care injuries, nurs­ing home falls, bed­sores and infec­tions, slip and falls due to dan­ger­ous con­di­tions in busi­nesses, food poi­son­ing, DUI acci­dents, con­struc­tion acci­dents, prop­erty dam­age, worker’s com­pen­sa­tion, mal­prac­tice mat­ters, and insur­ance bad faith.

Aggres­sively Han­dling Injury Cases in Atlanta and Through­out Georgia

We rep­re­sent per­sonal injury and wrong­ful death vic­tims and their fam­i­lies through­out Geor­gia in Alpharetta, Atlanta, Can­ton, Cham­blee, Chat­ta­hoochee Hills, Clark­ston, Col­lege Park, Dal­las, Dal­ton, Decatur, Dorav­ille, Dou­glasville, Dun­woody, East Point, Fair­burn, For­est Park, Franklin­ton, Grif­fin, Hapeville, Johns Creek, Jones­boro, Lake City, Litho­nia, Lizella, Love­joy, Macon, Mari­etta, Mil­ton, Mor­row, Moun­tain Park, Nor­cross, Pal­metto, Payne, Pine Lake, Riverdale, Rome, Roswell, Sandy Springs, Sof­kee, Stone

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Call toll free at (800) 900‑2400 or locally at (770) 955‑3000 for an absolutely free and com­pletely con­fi­den­tial consultation.