Workers' Compensation and Employer Liability Newsletter - Fall 2020

Florida’s Judge David Langham, In New White Paper, Instructs On, Cautions Against, Covid-19 Presumption Laws by David B. Torrey WCJ - David Langham & Chris Mandel, American Workers’ Compensation – A Study in Disparities and the Expanded Use of Presumptions (Sedgwick Institute, July 2020), https://www.sedgwick.com/assets/uploads/documents/Sedgwick-Institute_Workers-Comp_7.8.20-1.pdf.In this important insurance industry white paper, the authors review the recent popularity of presumptions in workers’ compensation laws. They first provide a short history of workers’ compensation from its inception. They note, among other things, that in some jurisdictions, laws provided for presumptions of compensability, giving the injured worker the “benefit of the doubt” in ambiguous cases that the injury arose out of the employment. These types of laws have, over the recent decades, been repealed, with most jurisdictions currently obliging the injured worker to prove his or her claim as in a tort case.