medical care

Published on: July 26, 2021

Walmart — How One Company Treats (Mistreats) Injured Employees

By Jeff Blackwell

I just read an interesting article titled:

The Walmart Stocker Who Quit And Told Off Her Bosses Over The Intercom

The article was published late last year. How did I miss it? Apparently, the Walmart employee reached the breaking point and quit over the store-wide intercom. That’s right — The employee quit over the intercom, telling everyone in the store exactly how she felt. Like the old Johnny Paycheck song, it was a real “take this job and shove it” moment.

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Published on: August 24, 2020

How Settlement Mill Lawyers Harm Car Accident Victims: Secret Deals With Chiropractors

By Jeff Blackwell

If you’ve read my prior articles, you know my opinion — Billboard lawyers often harm their personal injury clients. As lawyers, our job is to help our clients. We should put first our clients’ interests. Yet, many billboard lawyers help themselves at their clients’ expense.

How do settlement mill lawyers smiling from billboards harm their personal injury clients? Over the coming weeks, I’m going to write posts discussing several ways these advertising lawyers often harm their injured clients. Today, I’ll talk about the sweetheart arrangements many of these settlement mill lawyers have with a specific chiropractor to profit from your injuries.

Here’s how the sweetheart deal between the billboard lawyer and a specific chiropractor works. You suffer a car accident injury and call the billboard lawyer. You probably don’t meet with the actual billboard lawyer. That’s a different issue we’ll discuss in a later post. You probably meet with an “investigator,” “runner” or other staff member. Once you sign the contract, the billboard lawyer wants you to see a specific chiropractor. His chiropractor. That chiropractor will then run-up the charges for your visits. The billboard lawyer will use these exorbitant charges to try and negotiate a deal with the insurance company to settle your claim. It’s an assembly line process designed so the billboard lawyer spends as little time as possible working on your file. That billboard lawyer simply wants to make a few phone calls. And, in many volume law firms, a staff member is actually making the calls. You get zero service from the lawyer.

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Published on: June 23, 2014

The Alabama Court Of Civil Appeals Addresses Attendant Care For Injured Workers

By Jeff Blackwell

Sometimes, our Court of Civil Appeals issues a decision that creates a little “buzz.” This is what happened last week when the Court released the workers’ compensation decision in Alabama Forestry Products v. Harris. Usually, I read the decisions when released (or at least over the weekend after the release). This time I did not. I was busy briefing an expert witness issue. So, the phone call Monday morning from Work Comp Central asking my thoughts on Friday’s decision came as a surprise.

What’s the big deal with this case? It’s a big deal because the decision protects the right to medical treatment under Alabama’s Workers’ Compensation Act. And, it applies to working families.

I’ve written numerous articles about the impact of severe personal injuries on entire families. Entire families are altered as they adapt their lives to care for the hurt member. In many of our past cases, a spouse or parent had to quit their own job to care for a disabled loved one. So, how does this case protect medical benefits and promote families?

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