In the latest edition of PA Law Weekly, Founding Partner Jerry Lehocky discusses how repetitive stress injuries can qualify for workers’ compensation benefits. Jerry notes that many people “assume workers’ compensation is limited to a single accident: a truck collision, a fall from scaffolding, a hand caught in machinery,” without realizing that “the definition of a work injury is expanded to include repetitive motions that… cause a medical condition to occur.”
Just as a worker who experienced a one-time acute injury would be entitled to workers’ compensation, the laborer who laid bricks for thirty years and suffered repetitive strain to his knees and the office manager who developed carpal tunnel from years of repetitive hand movement are both also entitled to benefits.
“The insurance industry is based on a business model of denial,” Jerry writes. He describes how witnessed and definable trauma is frequently denied, which makes it easier for companies to deny Mancini cases as “there’s no single event that caused the injury.”
Jerry reminds readers that Benjamin Franklin’s proverb “Little strokes fell great oaks” has important implications for the health and rights of the modern worker.