The mediation session will not cost either participant. The Industrial Commission does not charge for a mediation sessions, and the Commission pays the mediator’s expenses. Dennis Burks has been the mediator for the Commission for over a decade. He has mediated over 10,000 Idaho Workers’ Compensation cases.
To change treating physicians you need a referral from your current treating physician to a new treating physician. Sometimes your treating physician may to decline to do so, if this is the case, a request can be made to the insurance company. If the insurance company refuses your request, then you may file a Petition for Change of Physician, see Idaho Code 72-432. Make sure your workers’ compensation doctor is within the referral chain of doctors that are authorized to treat you or the Idaho Industrial Commission has entered an order authorizing you to change doctors. If you fail to do so, you may be liable for fees charged by a physician you choose, if you have not been authorized to see that physician.
The always-fascinating EconTalk podcast had as its guest on January 18 “sneakerhead” Josh Luber of Campless.com, a site dedicated to tracking the secondary market in sneakers. There is a thriving market on Ebay and other sites in sneakers, particularly Nike basketball shoes. Just about every week, Nike releases small production runs of sneaker models to stores like Athlete’s Foot. They are intended to be collectible: maybe unique color combinations, or maybe a new run of a popular older model. People line up outside shoe stores in malls across the country every Saturday morning, trying to get a pair. They almost always resell them, sometimes for many times the already-inflated MSRP. The market is larger than you might think: in 2014, more than 125,000 individual resellers made more than $1.2 billion in profits over and above the retail price of the shoes.
And, of course, every year Nike releases the newest model of Air Jordans, and the same thing happens: hundreds of thousands sell out very quickly for full retail, and many of those also end up in the secondary market, selling for two to five times the retail price.
Listening to the discussion of sneakers made me think about trade secrets, an aspect of intellectual property law I haven’t discussed here before. Idaho’s intellectual property laws include a version of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, which allows owners of trade secrets some means of protecting them.
Your treating physician’s opinion may used and considered as evidence to support your case, but an insurance company may base its decision on the opinion of another physician other then your treating doctor. The insurance companies call their doctors independent medical evaluators or IME doctors. This is common and can be to your disadvantage. Get the help you need and an experienced Idaho workers’ compensation attorney. Get fair compensation. Not a penny more but not a penny less. Call me at 208-232-6101 or toll free at 877-232-6101. I offer free initial consultations and will answer any questions that you have.
The most important thing is, go see a doctor and get better. There is time later to worry about the legal issues surrounding your accident. Also, getting to the doctor quickly may help your case.
It is common for certain kinds of injuries in relatively minor accidents to go unnoticed at the time. Just as sometimes your muscles don’t hurt until the day after a workout, sometimes the symptoms of a soft-tissue injury, a whiplash, or a brain injury don’t appear until the next day, or even longer. This is a well-established fact, and it should not hurt your case at all if you said at the time you were not injured.
That is, so long as your doctor is able to relate your injury to the accident. In an Idaho personal injury case, your lawyer must be able to prove that your injuries were caused by the accident. This requires that a doctor testify that the accident caused the injury.
Husband and wife were driving/riding on a motorcycle and were involved in a collision with a car; wife sustained fatal injuries. Through a series of additional very unfortunate events, not all of wife’s medical bills were timely billed to her insurance company for payment. The at-fault driver of the car only had $50,000.00 in insurance to cover wife’s damages. Wife’s unpaid medical bills were approximately $90,000.00 and the insurance company that paid the bills that were timely submitted had a subrogated interest of approximately $50,000.00. Any recovery for wife’s estate seemed dim. I was able to get the entire $90,000.00 written off and the $50,000.00 was compromised to $10,000.00. The wife’s survivors were tearfully grateful for the recovery and compromises obtained. This result will forever be with me as a case where I made a big difference for my client. Stephen Muhonen
This is a tactic that workers’ compensation insurance companies use to defend against your Idaho workers’ compensation claim. The can require you to go see one of their doctors they refer to as independent medical evaluators or IME doctors. They can choose to use the reports generated by the IME doctors as medical evidence to cut off your benefits.
If this happens to you, hire your own experienced Idaho workers’ compensation lawyer to level the playing field. Protect yourself and your family.
Fred Lewis, experienced Idaho workers’ compensation lawyer
You took a car trip over the holidays, and got in a wreck. Now you are recovering from personal injuries caused by someone who lives in another state. It looks like you will have to sue to get compensation. What do you do?
You will probably have to sue in some other state. In all likelihood, the courts in your home state lack “jurisdiction” over the responsible driver. The U.S. Constitution and state laws make it difficult to drag someone into court in a distant state with which she has few connections.
If you must sue, you will have to find a court that has jurisdiction over the responsible person. Under the laws in almost every state, that means the state in which the responsible person resides, or the state where the accident occurred. Every state has a law which allows its courts to exercise jurisdiction over persons who come into the state and cause an injury there.
Ratings can get a little complicated when converting into benefits. Ratings should be based on the body part closest to the injury and converted to the “whole person” percentage. There are set percentages that are designated for specific body parts, which then can be converted to a whole person impairment rating. The AMA guidelines are used by almost all Idaho doctors.
If you don’t believe you are getting fair compensation and don’t understand what is going on, contact an experienced Idaho workers’ compensation attorney. You can contact me at 208-232-6101 or 877-232-6101. I offer free initial consultations and will answer any questions for free. I can tell you if you have a case.
Clients should look for and retain an attorney who they feel they can freely and openly communicate with on all aspects of their case. The case should be viewed and handled as a team; the process requires teamwork and candid communication, with all involved working together towards an understood and concerted goal. Stephen Muhonen
Idaho Law Blog
