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Hika Malik from Malik Malik in this video I want to talk about House bill 81 which makes enact some changes to the Ohio Revised Code which affects some of the specifically the workers comp sections in particular and specifically what I'll point out initially is a it affects 41 21.4 71 and that's basically it's reducing the time to file vssr application or award the application for award from two years from the date of injury to one year so now once this is enacted there's these changes which be enacted in roughly 90 days probably September ish once that happens if you have an injury after these changes are made then what they'll mean is before you had two years file vssr now you have a year to file a vssr so that's that's one thing and there's a few other things in this House bill but besides that I'm going to focus primarily on the changes with 41 which they're enacting with 40 120 3.52 so that's revised code 40 120 3.52 F actually and so and I'll just read this so this is it this is what it says so if an employee is unable to work or suffer a wage loss as the direct result of impairment written arising from an injury occupational disease the employees and how to receive compensation under this section provide the employee is otherwise qualified if an employee's not working or a suffered a wage loss as the direct result of reasons unrelated to the allowed injury or occupational disease the employee is not eligible to receive compensation under this section it is the intent of the General Assembly to supersede any previous judicial decisions or decision that apply to the doctrine of voluntary abandonment to a claim brought under the section so I guess with what they're saying is in what when they say voluntary abandonment so that was a judicially created what they said judicially created doctrine it's basically like law that didn't come from the the rule makers the legislature down at the Statehouse it came the law was created by the Supreme Court so it may have come from an appellate court and then it got the case got up to the Supreme Court and then the base would become a lot that's how loss can be created it could be you come through statute then it could come through judges creating laws through interpretation of things so that's what happened with this voluntary abandonment thing and so what ensure what voluntary abandonment is is basically if you are like not working so let's say you're not working and the reason why you're not working is not related to the work injury then what voluntary abandonment had said in the various cases was that you were not entitled to compensation so you were not entitled to the for example temporary total disability compensation and this also comes up in permanent total disability applications as well where people are found to have involuntarily abandoned the work force therefore they're found not to be eligible for PT or PT he's not granted rather so how this how this I mean so I could say that and that's about as helpful as reading the statute to you but how does that work in theory so the idea is so I let's say I get injured I'm working at say Amazon warehouse or you know Meijer or a nursing home and and I have a you know I'm I'm picking boxes a Amazon or Meijer I'm setting up I'm putting produce and stuff in the produce section and as I'm picking these items or I'm putting the in the produce section I tweaked my back I filed workers comp claim and will say my claims allowed for a lower back sprain and in the general generally if I had filed for you know the claim is allowed I'm not able to work and I'm certified by a PwC doctor in that doctor says hey this person is temporarily totally disabled for this period of time for the conditions allowed and his claim the lower back sprain so we're having him off from January 1st to you you know February 15th whatever so from January 1st February 15th I'd be entitled to or I may be entitled to workers comp so or temporary total disability come so I get injured I filed the claim claims loud and I have certification for this lower back sprain therefore I should get paid tt so in that case if nothing else arose you know you get paid your temporary total disability comp so let's so that's so in that case you're involuntarily disabled so you're involuntarily and this if you want to use a voluntary and voluntary abandonment situation in that situation you have involuntarily abandoned the workforce that is due to no act of yours besides the fact that you had this work injury you're not able to work so it's entirely because of the work injury you are not able to work and because you're not able to work in you have certification you're entitled to comp so the voluntary abandonment thing basically the way it would work out is so you have let's say you're working on Amazon or Meijer you have your work injury and then you go and you're going to pick up a check or something so you're maybe your claims allowed and and this is a week or so after the injury happens that you go on and you curse at the your and your manager for whatever reason some some wacky thing and then they term you if they terminate you because so you got injured and then you have then you have this thing where you cursed out your your main because you did something unrelated to work injury that caused you be terminated you have voluntarily abandoned the work force therefore you have severed the entitlements compensation therefore you're not getting temporary total disability so that's what and so that's been a thing that's brought up over and over and over again in the courts and it's been tweaked and turned and there's various flavors and ways that this thing has happened so basically I and by the basic wording in this in this statute it says the it's the intent of the General Assembly to superseding any previous judicial decisions that applied that judicially created a doctrine voluntary Bannerman which is fine which is I mean I don't know what that means does that mean that all these previous decisions are it's like white clean I don't know but it's I don't know if it really changes that much because it says and within the same thing if an employee's not working your stuff your guys suffered a wage loss as a direct result of reasons unrelated to the allowed injury so that's basically voluntary abandonment then they're not entitled to your comp so I'm not really sure I don't really see that this is I'm just not really sure this accomplished as much other than you're gonna have more you're gonna have more legal fees for defense attorneys to argue these case in the appellate court and then yeah so but the way this and not it may create more problems than it solves is the way besides is the case besides having to read because it's basically is it's gonna go you're gonna have cases that go to Common Pleas and it's gonna go pellet and then they're gonna basically reinforce the idea of a voluntary abandonment without saying this voluntary abandonment and and the the way this this thing has been carved and tweaked is it's it's it's and I've talked about this this case precision excavating which is just not a good case do you have taken up to the Supreme Court I feel but the way that the voluntary abandonment thing had worked in the past is that if you were injured and your doctor had certified you temporarily totally disabled that they base the ideas if you're certified temporarily totally disabled you cannot you're incapable of working therefore you've already been involuntarily broken apart from the job so you you can't then voluntarily been in the work force you can't have you can't do two things you can't have voluntary involuntary and then voluntary you're either one state or the other that's kind of the way I looked at and that's the way that the case is used to look at it but then the precision excavating came and and I've talked about this at length another video but essentially what the Corps said is if you do something basically what this statute says if it's a direct result of injuries unrelated to the allowed injury then you're not you're not entitled to comp there's there's a bit and they give some reasoning behind it you know and and some of the reasoning I kind of understand because I suppose you could abuse that so let's say you could almost use that certification from your doctor is almost like a shield like hey I've been you know certified you know you can't even though I did this thing like I cussed out this guy hey look I got this magic certification for my doctor I don't you know so in that case I could see why you shouldn't be it's how to come in the case but in that precision x-ray and they talked about - so again before this precision excavating if you were certified and then you're unable to work and you're certified by your doctor stating that you're unable to work then you would have been entitled to comp and this precision excavating said what they said now when a claimant removes himself from employment for reasons unrelated to the work-related injury which again is exactly what I've read in the statute he is no longer eligible for temporary total disability compensation so the way I read this statute that changed the statute they basically codified precision excavating I don't think that's a good thing but because before the case law what they would the case law was was even if the abandon appointment was volunteer voluntary must be in consideration of whether the employee was still disabled at the date of the comp at the termination so if that if if you had cursed out your person and you're disabled at that point in time you were to still you would have been terminated from the job but you would still have been titled to compensation and that could make a huge difference for some people and and so basically and the facts in precision excavating was the the guy had gotten injured and there's allegedly he was talking to his coworkers this is another thing don't ever talk to your co-workers about your plans what you're gonna do you and work outside work where you're going unless say you like your best buds just keep your personal life to your personal life and you because what's gonna inevitably what always happens as this stuff comes back to bite the injured worker it's because everybody wants to protect her job so the when you get hurt the supervisors will talk to your buddy and the buddy be like yeah he said he was you know riding horses over the we literally had this in one of the cases riding horses and that's how he injured his his his hand so silly stuff like that will happen so bottom line is keep yourself to yourself you could talk about things unrelated to you politics whatever but as far as what you're doing just keep it it's it's terrible you have to be this way but keep that information to yourself because what happened to this case is this guy he was taught telling his his co-workers allegedly that he was getting ready to resign and that you again he was gonna quit and then he was also making overtures of the company hey I'm gonna quit because I'm gonna go move down to Florida take care of my mom get a job there so what end up happen he's got it he got he got injured I think he quit and then he moved to Florida he couldn't find a job and then he requested temporary total and so this precision excavating they basically said hey you quit so that is your the exactly game look at the statute he quit so that was the direct results of reasons unrelated injury so if an employee's not working as the direct result of reasons unrelated to the allowed injury so in this case he quit his job so he quit his job for reasons unrelated to his work injury then you're not allowed to receive comp so in this case he quit her resigned and so if you quit or resigned or you get terminated you're not entitled to comp so yeah it could be a big deal and my concern is in that sense I kind of it kind of makes sense I mean if I don't know the details cuz I don't I didn't represent this guy but it could have been that he moved down there and he just couldn't find a job and for reasons completely under because I think the claim was was his work injury was preventing him from find a job but it could have been he just couldn't find a job and so you know when you can't find a job you quit you're not a child unemployment so I need money let's see how am I gonna get money I'm not gonna maybe I get Social Security supplemental income probably maybe SSD but well see the options TT let's try to get temporary total that's what happened here I think it didn't it didn't work out and then we got this really crap law but it's voluntary Benham it no longer applies and so this case I don't know if it applies but essentially it's been codified in the statute so it doesn't matter what my concern is is beyond this situation and the other reason so here's the deal so I think for a lot of people I'm not really certain that there's gonna be situations where you find yourself terminated after the fact sometimes you get terminated after the fact it seems like it's more common if you work like dude you need to do something that the job particularly since you're in a bubble and then you get terminated and in that situation that's where I see the risk yeah but if you're off work completely and somehow I don't really see it coming up a lot where you're going and you're cursing the person or something happens after the fact like that but again light duty I could see it especially you're under like a fishbowl lens you're in the fishbowl you're in a magnifying glass so I could see you know if somebody's gonna be picked on it's gonna be you and and there's always if you do get fired and you and you could always you know there's always potential to file retaliation lawsuit you know they're Italian they're firing me it's retaliation from you found workers comp claim but it's always gonna be an uphill battle with those lawsuits so not to say that doesn't happen where the folks prevail but it's it's it's not the easiest solution in the world but so my concern is so there's a there's a series of case law like where there's so this is post injury conduct this voluntary abandonment thing had been applied to it's always not been applied to in a judicial decision that's why I'm like concerned that they're wiping the slate clean because in the past pre-injury conduct and contemporaneous conduct even if that conduct was used to you you you had pre-injury conduct you had the injury and then you got terminated after the fact for something you did before the injury in that case you're terminated you know you may be terminated for cause but you would still have been allowed temporary total disability comp so for instance one of the cases that came up was which was was key was Kordell and there was a another case that followed on it but I think the Kordell case I think it pretty much the other case pretty much upheld Cordell but Cordell basically the guy was smoking weed the weekend prior the week prior went however you know if you smoke weed probably smoked weed every once a while so this guy was smoking weed every once a while and then he got injured and they did a post accident drug screen which is pretty much what every most employers have to you and in a certain industry I don't think I don't think that's typically done for office workers but you know warehouse workers factory workers I don't know probably most jobs so most and then also most jobs have a drug-free workplace policy so in that if you read that drug place work drug-free workplace policy which will be posted in your lunchroom or something they will say hey you can't do this and if you do you're fired so you're fired for cause and there's really nothing you could argue against that you could say hey I'm medical marijuana in Ohio medical marijuana is not a it's not they don't have anything in the statute that protects people who are found with marijuana in their system so if you go to Michigan and you get injured and they do drug test you're protected in Ohio you're not protected so fYI like medical marijuana is not a shield to getting terminated for getting a dirty drug test but so what happens is they terminate you and then the Kordell case the the court said hey yeah he's terminal it's ine but he's still entire to comp had nothing to do with his injury so blah blah blah because for me the reason why I think is important is because I mean otherwise employers could keep those dossiers of every little thing that you did incorrectly and then once you get hurt they can pull out and they'd be like ah you uh didn't you know submit your timesheet this particular day you know a month ago we're gonna terminate you therefore cool you don't get any comp you know what I mean but I don't know so so that would be my concern is they're gonna tweak that so that pre-injury conduct for whatever wacky reason because you know there's logic doesn't always prevail with with these laws and how the stuff works so sometimes capricious sometimes it's arbitrary so but my fear would be they would you know say hey pre injury conduct you know for certain things it can you know be a bar to compensation FYI intoxication is one of the affirmative defenses of employers to disallow a claim completely and there's a rebuttable presumption if you test within a certain range on various drugs so if you're working in a factory warehouse or whatever just don't do drugs I don't know if you want it if you want to do drugs and work get a job in the office and on office somewhere and I guess you can be a lawyer you could probably be a judge I don't know if doctors are drug tested but as far as I understand lawyers judges hearing officers these sorts of jobs not drug tested so if you want to as long as you you're your life doesn't spin out of control and it doesn't impair your ability to do your job then the knock yourself out which is that really fair you know but that's the way society works so but yeah so that's pre-injury conduct with so there's contemporaneous conduct is also so when I say contemporaneous conduct that means conduct that happens at the same time or around roughly the same time as the injury and that the case that is illustrative of this point is called the I don't know it's called gross - but I called the fried chicken case this this kid working I don't know if it was KFC or McDonald's or one of these folk places but he was told - he had to clean out a fryer he had to change the oil or something and there was a way to do it safely and a way that you could do it on safely and he had been told in the past like dude stop doing it the way you're doing it it's dangerous you're gonna get burned and he did it the way the incorrect way and you got burned so I think gross one I think they denied his comp and then gross - was like this is ridiculous this is not the way we thought this was going to work it's we're gonna use the conduct that caused them we didn't we didn't want to use the workplace rule violation that causes injury to be the thing that it's not really fair that that breaks them off from getting a comp so because then the reason why it's because one of the reasons why is workers comp has always been a it's they basically removed the kind of issue of negligence so ie if you do something unsafe or clumsy or the injury is your own fault or the injury is you know the employer did something slightly negligent or unsafe they removed that negligence thing so well sometimes get hearings where folks would be like oh but he kept on going on this chair and we told him not to do it and he's an idiot and well he might be an idiot you're guilty of an idiot idiocy but you got injured it's a work injury the claims lab so so that so and that was a grand bargain that's the whole point of the workers comp system because if they didn't have the workers comp is basically immunity to employers they didn't have that and then we'd have lawsuits lawsuits would potentially one it would probably be harder for injured workers for the lesser serious injuries to bring their case to the court but for more serious injuries the employer could potentially be on the hook for you know millions of dollars for for these various injuries because of the the the type of damages that you get for a personal injury kind of situation and that's that's why workers comp everybody when people want to settle their claim or their comp plan they're like huh you know they think they're gonna get millions and it's like and you're not gonna get millions that's you're reading these things about you know these massive lawsuits and those RPI things so you can pierce the employer immunity but it's special circumstance some majority of the time that doesn't happen so you're protected you you have workers comp claim you're refunded that way or you're paid or you're compensated that way so so anyway so this kid burns himself and they again they say this isn't we didn't contemplate that the workplace rule violation that gave rise to the actual injury we we're not gonna use that to deny him calm so so again he could be terminated that's fine he broke a violated workplace rule but he's still in tired of calm so but again my concern is I don't think that's gonna change but you know who knows it could so that's whenever they tweak these things it's kind of like a you know everything's kind of an equilibrium and it's very fragile and when you start throwing these things like that it's there's got to be a real good reason so that's my concern with that and also so if you file for if you have a worker's comp claim and it's been going on forever at some point you'll be found Maxo medically improved the next step if your injury was serious enough and you couldn't return to work would be to file for PT D so they also changed section 41 2358 d3 and what it says is so what it said before was the employee permanent so there's a permit l disability so this is the perm total disability should not be compensated when the reason the employee is unable to engage in sustained enumerative employment is due to any of the following reasons whether an individually or in combination so I'm going to skip the other ones go to three the employee retired or otherwise and this is before it changed voluntarily banned in the workforce for reasons unrelated in the allowed injury occupational disease so that actual language voluntary abandon was part of the statute so now the Revised Code so now it's changed to you the employee retired or otherwise is not working for reasons unrelated to the allowed injury or occupational disease I'm not really sure I mean I guess I doubt that's gonna change much but maybe some of these cases if you're maybe maybe well I don't know but and when they say what a lot of times when you file for PT nowadays is you basically have to exhaust what's called your you have to attempt to return to work so vote you have to try vocational rehabilitation most of time or you have to have some kind of injury it's such that vocational rehabilitation wouldn't be a realistic thing so like you're paralyzed obviously you know my suggestion for all is Pte hearing is when they say hey this person work they should put them to work in the beat up you see it's got billions of dollars they could have put all these people and give you greeters at the BWC building I don't think it answer the phone but you know make work you see so I'm being silly but when you read these orders from these things it is kind of facetious this 8 year old or 78 year old person that's the age is not a problem in this case even this person's worked in blue-collar gigs for their entire life we think they could possibly work in a sedentary type position it's like yeah really okay good luck with that dude I mean I'd like some of these people make that decision I'd like them to retire from their gig and then find a completely different job in a completely different field it's not gonna happen it's not easy I've done it myself it's not it's not easy it's just not easy it's not easy to find a job from a new job leaving another job but it's even harder to find a job in a completely different field using completely different skills and physical abilities is not easy so it's almost like I wish that these hearing officers some of these folks who do deny it on those basis they could go through some role playing fame realistic role playing where they're all sudden there and they're not aware of it but they're terminated from their job it's eliminated for whatever wacky reason and and they have a really hard time finding the gig and then they realize all this sucks and then they're like oh is a joke or this was a simulation you have your job back but now you know how it feels like because it's not easy to get your job back after you lost it I mean you can get back in the workforce it's hard man so not to say people can't you can't just quit and stop working but it's not it's just it's an uphill battle and it's it is it's when people do get back working and it's awesome it's fantastic and I you know wish everybody the best of luck but my point is it's not always possible so that's HB 81 there's other things in it that you know I'm not not really Jermaine I just not interested in talking about because it's not I'm not really sure they change that much but you could read that you just search up House bill 81 but those are the big things BSS are from two years to one year which I don't I don't really see the lot why they did that and like why it was two years before is that like really that long to help have these things hanging out there what's next half year to file the thing I don't get it but and they don't I'm just curious what the reason I reason is and then the other thing was they they removed the voluntary abandonment language or implication from the statute so I don't know what that does for things but so if you have any questions concerns issues etc you as always give us a buzz six one four four four four seven four four zero or you could email me Kip GIP at Malik law firm calm as always all these videos and everything I talked about it's I don't represent you so there's no legal relationship if you have a legal issue you need to get an attorney if you won't talk about its RS and then we will talk about it otherwise have a safe work experience and good luck thank you bye