Monday, December 29, 2014

Realities of time associated with Wisc and Section 32 Agreements

As we have discussed throughout our blog; payment of the agreement is subject to various delays and legal formalities. The quickest  way to modify your benefits has become the WISC settlement. These formal written agreements must be approved by a Law Judge before the carrier can be compelled to make appropriate payments pursuant to the agreements.The normal time, post signing of the written WISC agreement for a hearing,  is less then three weeks after all parties to the agreement have signed same. The procedure starts with a request for a hearing by one of the parties and has been running within two weeks of the request with payment following the written publication of the agreement by the Workers' Compensation Board. The publication of the approved agreement usually takes a week to ten days post hearing.

A more detailed settlement is usually done by way of a Section 32 Agreement. This procedure has many delays to wit: formal writing of the agreement and the signing of same by all the parties. Occasionally when individual beneficiaries are on Medicare or Medicare eligible a formal application and review has to be conducted by vendors for the Insurance Company and then reviewed by the CMS unit responsible for Medicare cases. This has now been taking approximately 4 weeks for the Vendors review and and additional 4-6 weeks for CMS approval when no glitches develop. Once the CMS approval document is issued by CMS then hearings are generally set by the compensation board  and held within 5-7 weeks post filing. Once the Judge approves the agreement at a hearing a decision is published within 2-3 weeks and payment is made by the carrier within 10 days of the published decision date.

As stated throughout our blogs,  these blogs are both written for educational and informational purposes and not formal legal discussion of your specific case. Individual delays sometimes occur depending on the specifics of the instant claim. It is always best to contact your attorney for full and formal discussion of your claim and benefits associated with same.

Saturday, December 27, 2014

Practise remains the same.

The firm continues to be a ground level litigation firm handling court appearances and trial work from start to finish. The reality is that Workers' Compensation has devolved into settlement negotiations or long fought litigation. We try to negotiate good results without jeopardizing our clients benefits. We believe the assistance of veteran trial attorneys will help in this new era of Compensation and Civil Litigation.

Additional thoughts legal Services



Over the last many years we have been working with individual attorneys assisting us with complex Negligence cases. We are now reviewing additional routes for handling lighter cases with visiting  attorneys.We'll let you know how this develops. I am investigating my options?