Alexandria - 1, Mount Everest and the $18 Billion in profits Goliath - 0

In 2019 our client was injured when part of the assembly line she worked on fell and hit her between her hip & knee.  Doctors and other medical providers are trained to start at the lower end of diagnosis and work their way up.  So they usually start at Sprains, Strains, Abrasions or Contusions.  Then as your problems persist, they get the tests to show much more serious problems.  It become s our job, when these are found, to add them to the allowed conditions in your claim. 

Now, as we are workforce working until we are much older, more and more of us are being injured with problems that pre-date our injury, whether we know about them or not.  Speaking as someone whose age starts with a five, I can tell you that many of those aches and pains we get as we get older are signs of arthritis and other problems with our joints. Worse still this process actually starts for many when our ages start with Fours, Threes and even the occasional Two and even rarely a One.   

But worse still our Ohio Republican Super Majority in all branches of government have made it harder for people like us who have problems that are there, whether we know it or not, before our workplace injury.  In 2006 they passed Senate Bill 7.  Previously if you had a preexisting problem, known or not, and the workplace injury made it worse, any increase in symptoms or need for treatment, it was cover. 

As of August 2006, that became a much higher, harder standard to meet.  Specifically we have to show that it was made substantially worse (without any definition in the law of what that means) and that there is at least one Objective (can not be faked, something like a test) finding that backs that.  The Bureau's leadership, when testifying for this law's passage, estimated it would save Ohio's employers, read take away from Ohio's Injured Workers, about Two Hundred and Fifty Million Dollars ($250,000,000) per year. 

And they were right.  The analogy I use to explain this challenge is climbing Mount Everest.  Now, every year, brave women & men climb that incredibly dangerous peak.  But you have to have the perfect weather conditions, train hard, have the right guides, and luck and you can make it.  But there is also a very beautiful but sad area on that mountain nicknamed the Rainbow Gorge.  It's beautiful in that it has almost every color of the rainbow in it.  Sad because that's the bodies of all of the climbers who fell to their deaths on the mountain.  

Sadly, that is what happens to many claims when a pre-existing condition is found since 2006. Worse, the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation has never changed in the last 17 years, their paperwork for adding conditions to claims.  So most doctors and Injured Workers don't even know what they have to do and without a great team behind them, these conditions are denied meaning the treatment you need, and the monetary benefits you deserve go unpaid.  

And that's where Alex seemed headed.  She was only 27 years old when the injury at work occurred but  the tests told her doctor she had a worsened problem here, but it had been made substantially worse by what happened to her at work. Sadly, because it is such a high burden to make, we lost her administrative hearings.  

But there is one final appeal in our system, past the three potential administrative hearings at the Industrial Commission, a jury trial in Common Pleas Court (the trial court) in the county in which you are injured.  But they are hard to win, expensive, and the employer usually has much more money than you.  And since her employer made almost $18 Billion in profits last year, Alex had a tough fight ahead.  

But Russ Gerney from our office gathered all of the needed evidence, guided Alex through the long discovery phase of the case and took this case to trial and Won.  But the employer had the right to appeal and filed an appeal to the Sixth District Court of Appeals here in Toledo.  

Well, yesterday, the three judge panel of the court ruled unanimously and across party lines, as judges often do, in Alex's favor.  So, Russ and Alex reached the top of Everest.  And now we can work on getting her the money and treatment help she needs.  

Do you have a tough fight ahead, maybe.  Do you need the help of a legal team like ours to get where you need to go, definitely. Whether you know how hard the fight ahead is, you should really talk to an attorney about it.  The Bureau of Workers' Compensation, the Managed care Organization, the Employer and their Third Party Administrator all have many attorneys working to limit your claim.  Call us at 419-244-7885 and we can help you climb up the road to where you need to go, whether it's a small hill, or one of the toughest mountains in the world to climb.