Can Your Facebook Pictures Make You Lose Workers' Compensation

Workers? Compensation insurance provides lots of benefits for injured employees in order to make their lives comfortable and help them continue to live a similar standard of lifestyle after getting injured on the job. Depending on the type of injury sustained, the victim is usually given medical benefits as well as financial payouts if he or she is unable to work for more than a week while recuperating. In case of serious injuries that require extensive treatments, the victim may be handed either total disability benefits or temporary disability benefits when his or her Workers? Compensation claim is successful.

Temporary disability benefits are a form of remuneration under Workers? Compensation where the injured party gets paid a weekly amount of money for specified period of time. Upon the expiry of the specified period, the claimant can file an additional claim for more benefits if his or her condition hasn?t improved and therefore requires further treatment and recovery. If the insurance carrier analyzes the new claim and realizes that the injured party?s current health status hasn?t improved as anticipated or even deteriorated then further Workers? Compensation benefits may be denied. The employee will then have the option of filing the case with a Workers? Compensation appeals board.

Insurance Companies Required to Provide Evidence to Deny Further Workers? Compensation Benefits for Undeserving Employees

The Workers? Compensation board is an independent body that reviews denied claims by injured employees and makes a ruling to dictate whether the injured party indeed deserves to be paid benefits being requested or not. During the appeals case, both the insurance party and the claimant presents their cases and supporting evidence which will be analyzed by the presiding judge to make a final ruling. So, can pictures posted on Facebook and other social networking sites such as Twitter, Myspace, etc. be used as evidence to deny a Workers? Compensation claim?

Well a Workers? Compensation Appeals Court has admitted pictures of an Arkansas claimant on Facebook and Myspace as evidence to determine whether his Workers? Compensation claim should be approved or not. The pictures indicate the injured victim drinking and having fun at a party. Zackery Clement, the claimant in the case was an employee that became a victim of a workplace incident in March, 2009. Clement suffered various health complications including hernia from the incident and got awarded temporary total-disability Workers? Compensation benefits for over a year. He has filed a new claim requesting for the benefits to be paid for a more extended period of time as a result of going under the knife three times due to the workplace injury he suffered.

The reason why the insurance carrier of the injured worker?s employer wants to present the pictures of Clement on Facebook and other social networking sites is to convince the presiding judge that the victim has recovered well and therefore doesn?t deserve additional Workers? Compensation benefits. The legal representative of the injured worker had argued that the Facebook pictures should not be admissible in court as it had nothing to do with the medical treatment required by the victim. Now that the pictures have been allowed in the Workers? Compensation process, it is feared that judges in similar cases in other states will allow similar photos to be presented in court.

Source: http://ogletreeabbott.com/blog/2012/02/can-your-facebook-pictures-make-you-lose-workers%E2%80%99-compensation-claim/

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