I understand how important it is that you receive your weekly temporary total disability benefits on time. If you are like many of my clients, when you lose your regular paycheck and you are depending on workers’ compensation, you may be living week to week and you may face significant and dire consequences when your checks are late. Here is what you need to know about late payments, the penalties that the insurance company must pay and what you can do to force the insurance company to issue your check.
Assuming that your claim has been accepted and you are not currently working, your employer’s insurance company must pay your weekly benefit checks on time.
Your first weekly benefit check must be mailed on day 21 after the accident if that check is mailed within Georgia, and it must mailed on the 18th day after the accident if it is mailed from an address outside the state of Georgia. The day of the accident does not count when calculating dates.
Subsequent checks mailed from within Georgia must be postmarked as of the last day of the week (i.e. Saturday) in order for payment to be considered timely.
Subsequent checks mailed from outside of Georgia must be postmarked by the Thursday of the week it is due in order for the payment to be considered timely. More on What Happens if my Weekly Benefit Checks are Late?
Filed under Income benefits, Miscellaneous information, Understanding the Law by 
If you have a computer and enjoy sufing the web, there is a good chance that you have a profile on Facebook, mySpace, Twitter or any of more than a hundred social media sites. These sites exist to help you connect with others – often for social purposes, and sometimes for business purposes.
How can an account at Facebook or many of these other sites hurt your workers’ compensation case? When you create a profile on Facebook, your account has a default privacy setting that offers no privacy. Anyone who has a Facebook account anywhere in the world can find your profile and read what you have posted, what others have posted on your “wall” and view photos that have been “tagged” with your name.
Insurance defense lawyers are well aware of Facebook, and they are aware that many Facebook users may not be very savvy about changing privacy settings. Perhaps there is a photo of you attending a ball game or a family gathering. Maybe you listed yourself as the CEO of ABC Enterprises. Thanks to New York workers’ compensation lawyer Jim Reed who posted about this issue on his New York InjuryLaw blog.
Photos and updates can easily be taken out of context. Even your frequency of posting can be used as evidence that you have the capacity to perform clerical type of work. Posts on Facebook and other social media sites can be used against you to put you on the defensive and as leverage to reduce the value of your case.
So, if you enjoy using Facebook or similar sites, take a few minutes to learn about the privacy settings. Block your profile to all but known friends and avoid “friending” someone that you don’t really know.
If you were not already aware that there is no real privacy in the world, now you know. Take steps to protect yourself.
Filed under Maximizing your settlement, Miscellaneous information by
A front page story in the Sunday, May 24, 2009 edition of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution details the struggle of five catastrophically injured Atlanta police officers to obtain needed medical help from the City of Atlanta’s workers’ compensation office. Each of these police officers was injured in the line of duty – with injuries ranging from brain damage to paralysis arising from gunshot wounds to the spinal cord.
Like many city and county governments, the City of Atlanta “self-insures” against workers’ compensation claims, meaning that weekly wage benefits and funds for medical treatment come directly out of the City’s budget. The City does use a private claim’s administration service called NovaPro Risk Solutions out of San Diego.
The City is not denying responsibility for paying wage or medical claims, but it has been refusing to pay for various medical procedures and medical devices.
In one instance a police officer who had been rendered a parapalegic from a gunshot wound needed surgery on his Achilles tendon because his feet kept slipping off his wheelchair footrests. More on Injured Atlanta Cops Fight Workers Comp System
I am pleased to introduce the Georgia workers’ compensation blog. In the days and months to come, I will be posting case studies, observations about the Georgia workers’ compensation system and answers to your questions about Georgia workers’ compensation. Please let me know what you think and what you want to know.
–Jodi
[tags] georgia workers compensation, workman’s compensation georgia, jodi ginsberg, georgia workers’ comp information [/tags]
