Workers’ Compensation

Generally, all injuries sustained by employees (arising from accidents that occur in the course of their employment) share the following important facts that you should know, and which many other attorneys’ websites do not mention.

The most important thing you must know at the outset when injured in the course of your employment is that even if you are at fault (such as making a mistake while trying, in good faith, to do your job), you are still FULLY ENTITLED TO ALL BENEFITS. Another important thing to know is that YOU CANNOT SUE YOUR EMPLOYER OR CO-EMPLOYEE FOR THE ACCIDENT – even if the employer has made some (even negligent) mistake! You should also know that a “Workers’ Compensation “claim” is not a “lawsuit.” You do NOT have the right to a “Jury Trial” as you would in a lawsuit, and you do not have the right to “discovery” as you would in a lawsuit. Also, workers comp lawyers do not charge you upfront fees or hourly fees as some laywers charge. Unlike normal lawsuits where the fees normally range from 33 & 1/3rd (to sometimes as high as 50% in personal injury lawsuits) of the damages awarded to you, Illinois limits (with some minor exceptions) workers comp lawyers’ fees to a maximum of 20% of the settlement or Arbitration Award in Workers’ Compensation claims. On the other hand, in exchange for you not being able to sue your employer (or any co-employee, unless that co-employee intentionally caused you to be injured), the law provides your entitlement to (among other things) certain benefits.

If you’d like to explore the benefits available to you for your work-related accident in Chicago Heights, feel free to reach out to us for an appointment. We welcome clients from all over the Greater Chicago Area, such as those injured in Orland Park, Tinley Park, Matteson, Park Forest and/or Frankfort, IL.

YOUR FIRST BENEFIT: The first benefit you are entitled to receive is to have your employer pay all reasonable medical bills arising from the medical treatment you received relating to your work-related accident. Important, (as it relates to the outstanding medical bills incurred by you for your medical treatment) is that an Illinois statute prevents bill collectors from filing collection lawsuits or taking any collection action(s) against you for unpaid medical bills relating to this work-related accident as long as you notify the medical provider that you have a Workers’ Compensation claim pending.

YOUR SECOND BENEFIT: Should your medical provider (doctor) decide you are temporarily, totally unable to perform any work for your employer and that doctor puts that decision (opinion) in writing, you will be entitled to receive what are called: temporary total disability (“TTD”) benefits. Subject to certain exceptions, this TTD normally amounts to two-thirds of the wages earned by you during the 52-week period preceding the date of your accident, divided by 52, to reach a weekly (“AWW” – average weekly wage). This however, does not generally (but there are exceptions) include overtime pay received by you during that 52-week period. This “TTD” benefit should (with some exceptions) continue to be paid to you for the entire period you are “temporarily, totally disabled” (unable to return to your regular employment) unless and until the employer finds some alternate work for you to do while you recover from your injuries. This alternative work is generally referred to as “light duty.” If the employer assigns you “light duty work” (such as sharpening pencils) while you are recuperating from the injuries related to your accident and pays you a lower amount weekly (on light duty) than the TTD you are entitled to receive, the employer and/or employer’s insurance company is required to make up the difference in pay.

YOUR THIRD BENEFIT: The third benefit you are entitled to receive is a “Permanent Partial Disability” (“PPD”) award or settlement sum. This sum is to be given to you as compensation for the “disability” you suffered as a result of the work-related accident. This sum DOES NOT NORMALLY INCLUDE any award for the pain and suffering associated with your injury (as in personal injury cases) or pay for the inconveniences suffered by you because of this injury or the loss of your normal (gross) earnings for that time period from the point in time of the accident until the point in time that you are released to go back to work by your doctor. Instead, the “PPD” is based upon a percentage amount which (in accordance with the Statutory amounts set out in the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Act), in general terms, represents the percentage loss of your future use of the injured part of your body (e.g. hand, arm, leg or even your whole body) injured in the accident. This percentage is a comparison between the difference the way your affected body part(s) functioned before the accident vs. the way that same body part exists or functions after being released from further care OR AFTER you reach Maximum Medical Improvement (“MMI”) as determined by your doctor at the time of your release from further medical care.

THERE ARE OTHER BENEFITS YOU MAY BE ENTITLED TO RECEIVE OTHER THAN THOSE DISCUSSED ABOVE, but they are not the “norm” benefit/award outcome in the predominance of Workers’ Compensation claims. Since they are highly technical and uniquely different between different injured workers, we can’t cover these BENEFITS in our website format.

So WHY consider hiring an attorney to represent you in filing a claim for Workers’ Compensation benefits when you are involved in a work-related accident? There are MANY REASONS you should retain an attorney to represent your interests in a Workers’ Compensation claim, none the least of which is that Workers’ Compensation is a highly technical field of law. Thus, it is highly likely that YOU (working with your employer’s Workers’ Compensation adjuster, if you don’t have an attorney) WILL FAIL to receive a benefit OR fail to get the proper monetary amount of a benefit OR fail to realize you are not being offered the proper amounts of TTD or PPD. Some other reasons for having an attorney:

REASON # 1: Many injured employees generally wait until long after the injury occurs before even thinking about hiring a lawyer to represent them with respect to this injury, thinking all the while that their employer will “do the right thing” by them. This may be a VERY BIG MISTAKE!! To begin with, it is generally NOT your employer who is handling your claim or paying benefits to you. Instead, you are generally dealing with an intermediary, such as a representative (“adjuster”) from an insurance company that carries insurance coverage for your employer or maybe even some other intermediary company which handles the claim for your employer’s Workers Compensation insurance carrier, putting your care and receipt of benefits even further away from your employer. These intermediary entities have a driving motivation to keep your benefits as low as possible to justify their cost to your employer and/or your employer’s insurance company. These intermediaries are experienced experts – YOU ARE NOT! We, at McDermott & McDermott, LTD., have 41 years (far more than the average adjuster) of experiences to bring to bear to get you ALL benefits due you and the best outcome possible for your PPD award or settlement.

REASON # 2: If you have not yet thought the Workers’ Compensation Act is very complicated from the foregoing, you are in a very small percentile of individuals trying to understand this area of law. You should also be aware that the foregoing is NOT an exhaustive listing of all the benefits available to individuals suffering work-related accidents. There are also things such as “maintenance,” “vocational rehabilitation,” “wage differentials disfigurement,” etc., which are not mentioned above as these are generally not part of a normal Workers’ Compensation claim, but suffice it to say that there ARE additional benefits as well as additional duties (“reporting the accident,” attending IMEs, etc.) you may have to perform pursuant to the Act or lose your benefits. So, you should retain an attorney to represent you as soon after the accident as possible, because this Act, which seems extremely “simple” on the surface, is in fact, extremely complicated. Attorneys who frequently deal in this area of law will be the first to tell you that many attorneys who do not regularly practice in this area of law can easily miss some benefit(s) due to you or not get you as much compensation as is due to you because of incorrectly calculating the amounts due to you under the different benefit categories or even totally missing certain benefits.

REASON # 3: Another good reason to retain an attorney when injured in a work-related accident is that the amount of compensation you may receive by representing yourself throughout this claim will almost certainly be far below the amount you receive after paying our fee to represent you in this matter. We charge 20% of the amounts we recover for you by settlement or Arbitration. There are many pitfalls you may fall into if you choose NOT to retain us to represent you in your Workers’ Compensation matter. Neither your employer NOR your employer’s Workers’ Compensation insurance company is YOUR FRIEND! Neither your employer NOR your employer’s Workers’ Compensation insurance company has your interests at heart! Neither your employer NOR your employer’s Workers’ Compensation insurance company will generally inform you of the nature and extent of all benefits due to you and/or available to you under the Act. The adjuster handling your Workers’ Compensation claim is incentivized to give you as little of the benefits due to you, thus justifying his/her costs and expenses to the insurance company and/or your employer. Both your employer and the employer’s insurance company have been down this “Workers’ Compensation” claim process repeatedly for many years, and during those years, they have learned quite a few techniques aimed at getting your claim resolved for as little as the law will allow. You, who have no training or experience in this field, are not able to compete with their skills and abilities in this technical field of law. Retaining McDermott & McDermott to represent you in this matter more than evens the playing field in your favor.

David G. McDermott of McDermott & McDermott, LTD. has been representing injured clients for over forty-one (41) years. He not only has handled many Workers’ Compensation claims during that time period but more to the point, before becoming an attorney, his wife had the misfortune to sustain a rather serious work-related accident and, she (as well as he) deeply felt the angst of her being injured and undergoing the very many problems involved in the Workers’ Compensation claims process. Because of this, Mr. McDermott takes this area very seriously and aggressively pursues all available benefits for all of his clients.

While in his last year of law school, Mr. McDermott (after being granted his Supreme Court 711 license before finishing law school) worked for the Workers’ Compensation division of the Illinois Attorney General’s Office. Furthermore, after going into private practice and starting his own law firm, Mr. McDermott assisted Illinois State Senator Aldo DeAngelis by participating in the Committee working to overhaul the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Act. Finally, over the years, Mr. McDermott has given lectures on Workers’ Compensation in the Chicagoland area AND has also lectured at other places, including the Beijing school of law (in China) on this area of law!