LawBank Hosts an Overview of Colorado Workers’ Compensation and COVID-19
April 9, 2020
On April 9, 2020, the LawBank community was pleased to host LawBank member Greg Cairns of Cairns & Associates, P.C. along with Ken Platt, former Director of the Division of Workers’ Compensation, to speak on issues related to COVID-19 and Colorado workers’ compensation law.
The LawBank community has a variety of high-level solo practitioners and Greg is one of these seasoned attorneys. He has been involved in around 6,000 cases and of those cases, has tried 600 of them. He works with a variety of employers including prisons and churches. He began the presentation by providing insight into the Colorado Workers’ Compensation system stressing the severity of the circumstances as even before the COVID-19 pandemic, unsafe employees could still apply for workers’ compensation benefits.
The key takeaways from the presentation included an explanation of Colorado’s workers’ compensation claims handled through the lens of a no-fault insurance system. Greg and Ken provided an overview of current litigation including a pending wrongful death case in Illinois where a Walmart store was being sued for an alleged failure to protect an employee that contracted COVID-19 at work. They described the workers’ compensation benefits that could be available to Colorado claimants related to medical expenses, temporary disability and impairment. The discussion was lively with Greg providing insight into defense strategies and Ken providing an analysis from the perspective of a former workers’ compensation judge and administrator.
When it comes to Colorado employers, the lecturers shared how they might be held accountable for COVID-19 illness in their workforce and that they will need to look into what types of safety equipment and gear they have provided. One of the very basic forms of analysis in these cases will be whether or not a person was more likely to have contracted the virus at work than not. They also addressed audience questions including how distribution centers might be held liable for workers’ compensation claims related to COVID-19 crisis. In this situation, they covered how a court will want to assess whether the COVID-19 viral load was greater at work than at home as those cases could be compensable based on the amount of people in the distribution center showing symptoms.
For the small law firm community, Greg provided great insight into signing up for workers’ compensation for their own law firms immediately to respond to the circumstances. He also provided a unique option for independent law firm owners to start a “FEMA Buddy” system which would be someone to help you follow COVID-19 safety protocol when shopping for food, exercising, securing medication and buying alcohol. Greg suggested that accountability can be helpful right now in navigating quarantine conditions.
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