Worker's Compensation
| Author | Jeffrey Wilson |
| Pages | 1141-1145 |
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Workers' compensation is a system that requires employers, typically through their insurance companies, to pay lost wages, medical expenses, and certain other benefits to employees who are injured on the job. Because employers pass on the costs of workers' compensation benefits or insurance premiums in the pricing of their products, consumers ultimately fund the workers' compensation system.
Workers' compensation is different from other types of torts in that it is not based on fault or negligence. A worker who is injured due to her own negligence or that of her employer typically is entitled to the same workers' compensation benefits as a worker whose injury did not result from negligence at all. The idea behind workers' compensation is not to right a wrong or punish negligence; rather, it is away to protect employers from negligence lawsuits and injured workers from destitution. The goal is to return injured employees to work efficiently and economically without damaging the employer's business.
Workers' compensation is legislated by every state, and the laws vary among jurisdictions but carry many of the same features. An employee who sustains an occupational disease or personal injury arising out of and in the course of employment is entitled automatically to certain benefits. These benefits may include lost wages, payment of medical treatment, provision of vocational rehabilitation or job placement assistance, and in the case of an employee's work-related death, benefits to the employee's dependents. Some workers, such as independent contractors, are excluded from workers' compensation protection.
Workers' compensation came about in the United States in the early 1900s, a product of the industrial age and a result of increasing numbers of job-related injuries and deaths. Until the development of workers' compensation laws, workers had little or no recourse against their employers for injuries sustained on the job. When job injuries led to the inability to work and the inability to pay for medical care, these workers frequently were left destitute.
The system of workers' compensation grew from the law of vicarious liability, an English law developed in approximately 1700. The law of vicarious liability made a master or employer liable for the negligent acts of a servant or employee. An 1837 English
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case, Priestly v. Fowler, modified the law of vicarious liability with the fellow servant exception, which relieved a master or employer of liability for a negligent employee who caused injury to a co-employee. Following the example set in Priestly, U. S. courts continued to modify the law of vicarious liability and provide the employer with greater protections against liability resulting from negligence. The doctrine of assumption of the risk presumed, often incorrectly, that employees could refuse dangerous job assignments, thereby relieving the employer of liability when those job assignments caused injury or death. Employers could also rely on the defense of contributory negligence, which completely absolved them of liability when the employer's negligence along with the employee's negligence caused his injury.
Workers were left with inadequate remedies against their employers for injuries resulting from work. At the same time, the industrial age was spawning an increase in work injuries. States began to recognize a problem by the end of the nineteenth century and looked to the compensation systems of other countries for guidance. In 1884, Germany, with its socialist traditions, had developed a compensation system whereby employers and employees shared the cost of subsidizing workers disabled by injury, illness, or old age. Next was England, which in1897 developed a similar system called the British Compensation Act. Finally, in 1910, representatives from various states met in Chicago and drafted the Uniform Workmen's Compensation Law. This uniform law was not widely adopted, but states used it as a model to draft their own workers' compensation statutes. Most states had such...
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