When you’ve filed a workers’ comp claim, it’s common to not have experience with some of the specialized vocabulary and legal terms used. While your HammondTownsend attorney and paralegal can help you, you can also look them up using this guide. View the blog post People Involved in a Workers’ Comp Case for more information about individuals you may interact with.
Alternative Dispute Resolution: An alternative to the traditional workers’ compensation process, where a mediator will work with you and your attorney and the workers’ compensation insurance company to come to an agreement without going through the hearing process.
Benefits: The money you are entitled to after you have been injured or made sick by your job. The benefits might include medical care and money towards lost wages. Your workers’ comp claim is filed so you can get the benefits you are owed.
Deposition: A formal legal event where you answer questions under oath and your answers are recorded.
Evidentiary Hearing: A formal meeting where both sides in a workers’ compensation claim give information in front of a Deputy Commissioner. The Deputy Commissioner acts as a judge and provides a written ruling a few weeks after the evidentiary hearing.
Light duty: Restrictions on the type of work you are allowed to do while you are healing from your injury. Light duty restrictions are put into place by your doctor and stay as long as your doctor says they need to stay.
Occupational disease: A disease that comes directly from the job that you are doing or have done, and is not something that you could have been exposed to outside of the job.
OSHA: The Occupational Health and Safety Administration, the federal agency responsible for standards of health and safety in the workplace. The agency creates and enforces rules for worker safety and has training and educational seminars to help businesses follow them.
Virginia Workers’ Compensation Commission: The Virginia state agency responsible for managing the state’s workers’ compensation program, including coordinating claims, making rulings on claims, and otherwise making the worker’s compensation program function.
Vocational Rehabilitation: Job searching and job retraining help you may receive after you have been injured at work; often occurring when you have been placed on light duty restrictions and cannot do your regular job.
Workers’ compensation insurance: Legally-required insurance purchased by a business to provide care and benefits to the business’s workers if they are injured or made ill by their job, as decided by the Virginia Workers’ Compensation Commission. Most employees in Virginia are covered by workers’ compensation insurance.