One Urban Legend We are Sick of Hearing

Thursday, July 1, 2010 | 0

By Eugene Keefe
Keefe Campbell & Associates

We are told over and over and over the adage: “What is Good for the Petitioner’s Bar is Good for Defense Lawyers.”

This concept is supposed to justify some secret pact among Illinois lawyers to allow petitioner’s attorneys broad leeway to secretly do whatever they want in their efforts at running the Illinois Workers' Compensation Commission and reviewing courts. We respond to say, what is good for petitioners’ lawyers is good only for petitioners’ lawyers and their clients.

Giving out large workers’ compensation awards and forced mega-settlements is not good for Illinois business, government bodies or defense lawyers. We also note workers’ compensation litigated claims are down by about one-third, in part because the insurance adjusters and risk managers that we talk to feel there is almost no defense that may prevail at the Commission. We continue to post our winning outcomes on our website and try to let insurance adjusters and risk managers know they have a chance to prevail if they get the evidence necessary to support denial.
 
The members of this law firm don’t have an implicit or explicit agreement with the other side of the bar to quietly allow them to run things. We are very confident there is a growing potential for sweeping workers’ compensation reforms, as the Illinois political climate is swinging away from the forces of Illinois labor and the buffoons currently in Springfield who are running multi-billion dollar deficits without making any effort to stem the tsunami of red ink by cutting budgets. We point out the Illinois State Chamber of Commerce is hosting a fall seminar on October 22, 2010; they are calling it a “Workers’ Compensation Revolt” for Illinois business. We are participating and watch this space for details. The leading candidate for governor, state Sen. Bill Brady is promising numerous workers’ compensation reforms will take place when he wins.
 
What we feel will be good for the petitioner’s bar and the defense bar and Illinois jobs, business and governmental bodies is for all sides of the workers’ compensation matrix to try to remember what workers’ compensation is for—the goal is to make sure injured workers get medical, lost time and permanency benefits in a reasonable and fair program. No one should get millions of dollars in permanency, as we are seeing being demanded and sometimes awarded in case after case.

As one obvious new trend in overcompensation of injured workers, our reviewing courts have, for the first time in 100 years, started to demand payment of double weekly permanent partial disability benefits, as well as PPD being awarded at the same time as temporary total disability; to our knowledge, no state’s work comp system does this.

Risk managers and observers from other states are ridiculing us when they hear things like that are going on in Illinois workers’ compensation—all of it puts up a big “Do Not Enter” sign when anyone thinks of bringing new business or adding business within our state’s borders. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost, in part, because of skyrocketing workers’ compensation costs—we don’t think that is good for defense lawyers. You can castigate us for saying the obvious but you only have to ask the brokers, risk managers and insurance adjusters to hear this refrain over and over again.
 
What we feel is good for defense lawyers is a fair system with reasonable and impartial arbitrators and commissioners who want to see injured workers taken care of without overcompensating them. We hope the members of the plaintiff/petitioner’s bar get on that bandwagon before it runs you over.

<i>Eugene Keefe is a partner with Keefe Campbell & Associates, a Chicago workers' compensation law firm. This column was reprinted with permission from the firm's client newsletter.</i>