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Employee Susceptibility to Occupational Disease

Every employee brings his own idiosyncrasies to his employment. This includes pre-existing weaknesses, hypersensitivities, and other susceptibilities that could impact the employee's health. The minority rule in workers' compensation coverage is that there is no recovery for an occupational disease where a pre-existing condition, such as asthma, contributed to the resulting disease. The minority states consider the disease to be the result of the employee's own innate susceptibility rather than to the peculiar conditions of his employment.

Injured Employee's Recovery Election

Historically, when an employee was injured in the course of his employment, but at the hands of a negligent third party, he was technically able to pursue relief through both the workers' compensation system and a third-party action. Though not able to receive a double recovery, the employee was technically eligible to recover under either theory. However, strict election rules required that he choose which theory of recovery he would pursue, even if his "choice" ultimately left him with no compensation at all. For example, the injured employee elects to proceed with a third-party action, thereby foregoing workers' compensation, but ends up losing the third-party action.

Supplemental Security Income and Homeless Individuals

The "homeless" status of an individual does not affect his eligibility for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits. Homeless individuals have the same right to apply for SSI benefits as anyone else. To obtain his benefits, a homeless individual may pick up his payments at a local Social Security office, have the payments mailed to a third party, have the funds automatically deposited into a personal bank account, or have the payments sent to a representative payee who will act in the individual's best interests.

Farm Labor Exemption

Several states exempt farm labor from operation of the state's workers' compensation statute. Though a farm employer may be exempt from compulsory workers' compensation participation, he is not precluded from voluntarily electing to do so. Once he does, the farmer is just like any other employer who can claim tort action protection pursuant to the workers' compensation exclusivity provision.

Issue of "Time" in "By Accident" Concept

Generally, for those jurisdictions adhering to the requirement of injury "by accident" for the injury to be compensable, there is an element of time. Basically, not only must the injury be "accidental" but also the causative event must be fairly identifiable as to time. It has been the general consensus among these jurisdictions that the time element is satisfied if either the event that caused the injury or the resulting injury itself was sudden. The time of the event that caused the injury is sufficiently definite if pinpointed to a span of several hours or days. As for the resulting injury, "suddenness" can include a gradual effect on the worker's body that ends with an injury that is clearly identifiable as to date.