There is a lot to like about fall in Ohio: cooler temperatures, changing leaves, football, cider and pumpkin-flavored just about everything.

But fall also brings something less enjoyable: more opportunities to slip, trip and fall.

Wet leaves can be surprisingly slick. Rain makes sidewalks and loading docks slippery. Earlier sunsets mean workers may arrive or leave in the dark. And before we know it, frost and ice will join the party.

At The Law Offices of Kurt M. Young, LLC, we spend a lot of time helping people after they have been injured at work. We'd much rather see workers avoid the injury in the first place.

🍁 Watch Your Step — On AND Going Into the Job

Falls don't just happen while someone is operating machinery or working on a construction site. They can happen walking across a parking lot, climbing stairs, stepping onto a loading dock or simply making your way from the car to the front door.

A few simple habits can help:

• Slow down. Saving 30 seconds isn't worth spending weeks recovering from an injury.
• Watch for wet leaves. They can be almost as slippery as ice.
• Use handrails. They're there for a reason.
• Wear appropriate footwear, especially as frost and snow arrive.
• Keep walkways clear. Leaves, cords, tools and debris can quickly become trip hazards.
• Report hazards. If you see a dangerous condition at work, tell someone before you or a coworker finds it the hard way.
• Be especially careful in parking lots. Uneven pavement, potholes, curbs, poor lighting, leaves, rain, snow and ice can all create hazards.

🚗 What If You Fall in the Parking Lot Before or Leaving Work?

This is where Ohio workers' compensation law gets interesting.

People often hear that injuries while simply traveling to or from work generally aren't covered because of Ohio's “coming-and-going rule.” That's true as a starting point for many fixed-situs employees but it isn't the end of the story.

Ohio courts recognize a “zone of employment” exception. An employer-owned or controlled parking lot that employees use to enter or leave work can fall within that zone. Ohio courts also look at factors such as whether the employer required employees to park in a particular lot or area and the employer's control over that parking area.

That distinction matters. Ohio courts have also rejected claims where the employer happened to own a parking lot but the worker wasn't required to park there and had other parking options.

So, put simply: If you fall in your employer's parking lot or a parking area where your employer requires you to park the fact that you haven't punched the clock yet does not automatically mean you don't have an Ohio workers' compensation claim.

As with most things in workers' compensation, the particular facts matter.

🍂 Enjoy the Season Just Watch Where You're Walking

Ohio fall weather can change quickly. Sunshine in the afternoon can become wet leaves, darkness and frost before you know it.

So, enjoy the colors. Enjoy football, whether it is Buckeyes, Wolverines, Rockets, Browns, Lions or Kurt’s favorite the Bengals.

Enjoy the cider, there are some amazing places to get it in Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan.

Just try to keep the fall in the season and not in your workday.

And if you are injured going into work, while working, or leaving work, don't assume you aren't covered simply because someone tells you, “But you weren't on the clock.”

For more than three decades, The Law Offices of Kurt M. Young, LLC has helped Ohio's injured workers understand their rights.

This is general information about Ohio law, not legal advice. Whether a particular injury is compensable depends on the specific facts.

#OhioWorkersComp #WorkersCompensation #OhioWorkers #WorkplaceSafety #FallSafety #SlipAndFall #WorkplaceInjury #InjuredWorkers #ParkingLotSafety #OhioLaw #WorkingFamilies #KurtMYoungLaw

Every year on September 19, otherwise perfectly reasonable people are given permission to spend the day saying things like “Arrr!”, “Ahoy, matey!” and “Shiver me timbers!”

In 2011 the social media team at the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation posted a social media post using it, and laughed when our very new social media team responded

Avast ye scurvy dogs at the BWC & IC, heave to and prepare to be boarded.  Give up all ye shinnies & rum.

So naturally, we at The Law Offices of Kurt M. Young, LLC couldn’t let National Talk Like a Pirate Day sail by without joining the crew.

And believe it or not, pirates and Ohio workers’ compensation have a connection. Ever seen that stereotypical picture of the pirate from the 1700 & 1800’s?  We did our best job with the graphics, remember we’re lawyers, not artists. 

Well, the earrings and other decorations weren’t just for show.  We kid you not; it was a form of workplace injury protection. 

The first workers’ compensation laws were created in Germany (Prussia then) in 1884.  It didn’t make its way to the US until 1908 in Wisconsin and the the program we have now in Ohio started in 1913. 

Given that it didn’t exist yet, and we doubt captains were very law-abiding types, they needed something.

Imagine for a moment that you’re a pirate working aboard a ship:

You slip on a wet deck and hurt your back.

A crate falls from the rigging and lands on your foot.

You develop shoulder problems after years of hauling ropes.

An unfortunate swing of a sword, fire of flintlock or cannonball leaves you needing an eyepatch or a peg leg.

Arrr...that sounds like a workers’ compensation claim! (no, really, yes we’re being a bit tongue in cheek, but )

Of course, if your pirate ship were an Ohio employer, things would get considerably more complicated.

You’d need to report the injury right away.

It will be difficult finding that Ohio BWC Certified Provider on the sea or the next port. 

And back then, well medical testing was a bit, how shall we say, unavailable. 

There could be questions about what conditions are allowed in the claim, whether you can return to your former position of employment aka your role on the crew, what compensation you're entitled to receive, and perhaps even a trip before the Industrial Commission.

And suddenly: “Arrr! I be needing a lawyer to deal with these scurvy dogs”

That's when you may want somebody aboard who knows how to navigate the waters.

For more than three decades, The Law Offices of Kurt M. Young, LLC has helped injured Ohio workers navigate a workers’ compensation system that can sometimes feel like sailing through unfamiliar waters without a map.

Fortunately, you don't need to understand every statute, rule, form, hearing procedure, or deadline yourself.

That's our job.

And while we can't promise buried treasure, parrots, or a ship full of gold doubloons, Ohio workers’ compensation benefits can include medical treatment and various forms of compensation when the law allows them.

One more thing: unlike certain legendary pirates, please don't wait until you've lost a leg before asking for help.

If you're injured at work, knowing your rights early can matter.

So today, hoist the Jolly Roger, practice your best “ARRRR!”, and enjoy one of the sillier holidays on the calendar.

And remember: If ye be injured on the job in Ohio, ye may need more than a treasure map to find the benefits ye deserve.

Avast ye scurvy dogs at the BWC & IC, heave to and prepare to be boarded.  Give up all ye shinnies & rum.

Happy National Talk Like a Pirate Day from the crew at The Law Offices of Kurt M. Young, LLC! 🏴‍☠️⚖️

Disclaimer from the Captain: Kurt Young is licensed in Ohio, not on the Seven Seas. This post is for general information and pirate-related amusement and is not legal advice.

#TalkLikeAPirateDay #NationalTalkLikeAPirateDay #Arrr #OhioWorkersComp #OhioWorkersCompensation #InjuredWorkers #OhioWorkers #WorkplaceInjury #WorkersCompLaw #OhioLaw #WorkingFamilies #LawOfficesOfKurtMYoung #KurtMYoungLawrt customizing

Very Few of us who were alive will ever forget where we were the morning of September 11, 2001. It was such a beautiful and sunny day in Toledo. I had gone to the YMCA on Summit Street, worked out, showered and dressed for the day. 

The news broke somewhere between when I left a parking garage I parked at a block or so south of my office at a former firm, where I was a partner at on Erie Street, and when I arrived in the office.

I walked into our third floor lobby to our staff huddled around a TV in our large conference room. They told me of the first plane hitting the first tower. I told them the story of a WW II bomber hitting the Empire State Building in a rainy, foggy night. But much like Toledo, NYC had perfectly clear skies.

And then we saw the second plane hitting the second tower and I knew it was terrorism.  Tom Clancy had written a book I read a short time before called Debt of Honor where someone slammed a plane into the US Capitol Building to seek revenge.  

Not long after word broke of the plane hitting the Pentagon a client showed up for his appointment. He was a World War II veteran and I asked him if he wanted to go forward with our meeting. He asked if I did. I said sure, this was my generation’s Pearl Harbor, but we were safe in Toledo and I couldn’t do anything that minute to help anyone. Either in the midst of that meeting or shortly after the first tower fell.  

I explained to our team that both or at least part of both would eventually collapse. No building could take that kind of hit. Then the confusion and fear spread further.  Word broke of a car bomb near the State Department building in DC, which was false. Then word of a fourth plane and it crashing outside of Pittsburg. We found out that our local air national guard, the 180th Fighter Wing had been sent to shoot it down, but it was crashed before then.

My boss wouldn’t let everyone go home yet. I went to lunch with my wife and some friends as she is a pastor and our team at her church needed to meet and reconfigure Sunday’s service. After lunch, my boss finally relented and we told everyone who wanted to leave they could with pay. But a group of holdouts refused to go. So I decided to stay as the management person.  

My wife and child were safe, obsessing about missing relatives, all of whom were fine, wasn’t healthy, so I worked the files at work. Later that afternoon, I got a frantic phone call from our second floor telling me there was a fifth plane, it was in Toledo airspace, and was resisting orders to land. The remaining staff people were panicked.

I got them to tell me where they got their info, went onto the website and read the story.

It wasn’t breaking news but the recap of the local angle to the story.  

Flight 93 was in Toledo Airspace, between Toledo and Mansfield, when the hijackers took control. Again we had a pair of fighters at our air national guard base on alert and they went after it. About 7 or so planes did emergency landings in Toledo. No fifth plane nearby.

Later that day, when we finally got everyone to go home, I joined my wife and my two years and four month old daughter. The adults took turns watching video after video, while the other played with our daughter in the sun room off of our living room.

Of all of the videos, the horror of the planes hitting three of the largest buildings in the world, one hit me the most and my wife couldn’t get why it, of all the other horrors of the day, hit me the worst.

A man had a camera and was blocks away when one of the towers collapsed. The wave of ashes and debris blew over him as he ducked under a car. But it wasn’t the sights of the video, it was the sound. Specifically a piercing chorus of sounds.

I have spent three decades now representing injured first responders. Thanks to my position on Toledo City Council, I had the honor of chairing the Public Safety & Criminal Justice Reform Committee of Toledo City Council, and even at an event called Fire Ops 101, got a one day taste of the job.

I knew about the emergency locator beacons, being the son and great grand son of volunteer firefighters back then, and that the sound I heard was several hundred New York Firefighters in distress all at once. I knew the toll in the those who ran to that danger was going to be staggering.

And then I was taught a lesson by my child we weren’t screening her enough. She was playing and build a tower of bricks and crashed a toy plane into it. So the TV finally went off for a while.

Within about 24 hours, as I could see the men & women of the 180th Fighter Wing flying a combat air patrol to protect us from any attempt to hit us from Canada, I had an idea what I could do to help.

We had a young associate who really wanted to do will and probate work. I am a Navy dependent, and but for a really thick set of glasses would have served in the JAG Corps right out of the law school.  I therefore knew, we were going to be undertaking the most massive deployment of troops in decades. So I contacted the local Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine and National Guard units and asked to talk to the JAG officer assigned. As expected, to say they were overwhelmed by the coming task was understatement. 

So thanks to a great team of partners, that associate and our support staff, we decided to offer to any local active duty or reserve military personnel a free will and durable power of attorney and discounted ones for their families.  And we did hundreds. Within a day of our story hitting local media, many firms throughout our area joined us.

A month or so later, I signed up for Trial Lawyers Care, which was started by the now American Association for Justice. Because of the scale of the tragedy of 9-11, with people killed in New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia and a web of possible ways to get families help, a clearinghouse was set up with training and insurance to cover us. We would provide free assistance with workers’ compensation claims, social security survivors claims, and eventually claims to funds for those injured on the ground.   

That December, my wife and a team from our church got to do something constructive on the ground. She and two others trained as grief counselors went to a church, blocks from Ground Zero in New York and offered prayer and comfort to those working “The Pile”. It was a mound of what was the World Trade Center, the picture with the candle was shot just outside the work area. The team wanted to record and be a little light in that darkness.

Our local Muslim Community faced incredible hate and anger. Threats to attack the local Muslim schools, their children, and the local mosques were way too common.  So our church joined a group of others in the area. We would form a group of people who would come and stand watch outside so the children could play outside, their teachers eat lunch, and any troublemakers would face a wall of Christian witnesses to go through.

I will never forget the hospitality and gratitude we were shown for doing that, the basic thing our faith would compel us to do.

Since then, my family and I have been twice to where Flight 93 went down in Shanksville, PA. And we visited the Ground Zero Memorial in New York and the Pentagon Memorial in Arlington, VA.

If you’ve never gone to them, they are truly holy ground. You can almost feel the energy, not of the horrible evil that cost so many lives that day but of the courage and heroism that saved many more. The first responders and ordinary people running to danger, helping others escape it, giving their lives all leaves an impression you can feel. 

As the quote from the Roman poet Virgil on a wall at the memorial in New York says “No Day Shall Erase You From the Memory of Time.”. I am glad I didn’t know when I took the picture why the wall was so long and massive. Behind it is a room where many of the dead’s remains are and the families can come visit them.

Today we remember those who died that day and over the years since including 343 firefighters, 23 police officers, 37 Port Authority police officers, who ran to the danger instead of from it. And the more than 2,200 civilians the couldn’t rescue and the 550,000 plus they did.

God bless those we lost, those who committed such amazing acts of heroism, kindness, sacrifice, that we know of and many more that we don’t. And please protect us from another day like that. We will never forget you all.

For many of us, Labor Day means the unofficial end of summer, one last cookout, maybe a parade, and the realization that football season is finally back.

But Labor Day is about something much bigger for us as a nation, Toledo as a city and my family especially. 

The holiday was created to recognize the “social and economic achievements of American workers” and the contributions working people have made to the strength and prosperity of our country. The first Labor Day celebration took place in New York City in 1882, and in 1894 Congress made the first Monday in September a national holiday.

And here in Toledo, Ohio, we have a special reason to remember the history behind the holiday and a larger than most celebration of it. Why?

Toledo Helped Write American Labor History

In the spring of 1934, Toledo became the site of one of the most important labor conflicts of the Great Depression: the Electric Auto-Lite Strike.

What began as a dispute involving workers at the Electric Auto-Lite Company grew into a major confrontation involving thousands of workers, supporters, law enforcement, and eventually the Ohio National Guard. The conflict became one of several pivotal strikes around the country in 1934 that helped change the relationship between American workers and employers and advance collective bargaining. The U.S. Department of Labor specifically identifies Toledo's Auto-Lite strike as one of the major labor upheavals of that historic year.

And Toledo's role didn't end there.  In 1935, workers struck the Toledo Chevrolet transmission plant. That dispute helped push General Motors toward negotiations and was described by a future UAW president as an enormously important step forward for automobile workers. The labor unrest of 1934 and 1935 also helped inspire the “Toledo Plan,”an innovative local system for peacefully resolving future labor disputes.

In other words, when we talk about the history of America's labor movement, Toledo deserves a place in the conversation.

And we take that seriously. Toledo’s Labor Day celebration is one of the largest in the Midwest.  We host a massive parade every year where the women & men of all local unions march to celebrate their jobs and what having a union has done for them.  

For me it is even more special because the Labor Movement transformed my family and gave me the place I have now.  

My paternal grandparents’ start was not one that leads to a bright future.  Grandma & Grandpa Young (we called him Papa) dated as high school ended.  And well, back in the 1940's well let’s just say a “shotgun wedding” was not ideal.  But that is what they had. My Aunt was the first born only months after the wedding.  

Ever hear the term Irish Twins?  Well my father was born about a year after my aunt.  So two kids who had barely finished high school were now the parents of two kids and with no training in rural Napoleon, Ohio, about an hour west of Toledo in Henry County good jobs were not plentiful.  At the time they were both picking processing crops most of which ended up in Campbell’s Soup. 

But then Grandpa got a job with the railroads, like his father, and was a member of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen (BRT) which later merged into the Untied Transportation Union (UTU) and they moved to South Toledo Grandma at a time where mothers weren’t always working, got a job with Toledo Public Schools as a cafeteria worker represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).  And thanks to the good pay and training and benefits, they both worked their way up in their jobs and finances from there.  

And they raised four kids, a girl and three boys in a a two bedroom. One bath house in South Toledo (they turned the walk up attic into the boys room, And thanks to the good pay and good benefits they got, they sent 3 of the 4 off to college. The fourth was my Dad who was counting on Football to get him where he wanted to go, but unfortunately, he got hurt twice his senior year and couldn’t pass his scholarship physical for the University of Michigan.  

So Dad played instead for the Pensacola Naval Air Station Football team.  And thanks to the assistance of the US Navy and a great union job with the City of Akron represented by the same union as his mother AFSCME, he was able to go to college.  And one Uncle was a teacher and member of the Toledo Federation of Teachers.  And that Uncle and another married Teachers who were members of the Perrysburg Education Association (PEA) 

And the same was true on my Mom’s side with my Grandfather working his entire life a tool & die repairman, represented by the United Auto Workers (UAW), originally at the Champion Spark Plug Plant and later at, yep that Chevy Transmission Plant became General Motors Powertrain aka Propulsion.  My Uncle Bob, his son, followed in his footsteps and worked there as a UAW member as well.  My Grandmother started as a switchboard operator (yes they really used to plug and unplug cords to connect calls) with Communications Workers of America (CWA).  

By my generation all of us had a shot at college, with two trying it, finding a better life as a part of the building trades and they both also opened business along the way.  We also had teachers in the Gahanna Jefferson Education Association (GJEA) and Toledo Federation of Teachers (TFT).  So within two generations we went picking crops to owning businesses, being executives, working as dentists and teachers and lawyers who stand up for workers.

Why Labor Day Still Matters

The American workplace has changed tremendously since the 1930s. But the basic idea behind Labor Day hasn't.  Our country runs because people go to work.  They build our roads and buildings. They manufacture our cars and products. They teach our children. They care for our sick. They deliver our packages. They stock our stores. They keep our utilities running. They serve our food. And they perform thousands of other jobs that we rarely stop to think about.

At The Law Offices of Kurt M. Young, LLC, we've spent more than three decades representing Ohio's injured workers. That gives us a particular appreciation for something Labor Day reminds us of every year:

Behind every job is a person. And behind that person is often a family depending upon them to come home safely.

So this Labor Day, enjoy the cookout. Enjoy the long weekend. Enjoy the parade.

But take a moment to remember “why” we have the holiday—and the generations of working men and women, including many right here in Toledo, whose hard work helped build the communities, workplaces, and country we enjoy today.

To Ohio's working families, past and present:

Thank you for everything you do.

From all of us at The Law Offices of Kurt M. Young, LLC, have a safe and happy Labor Day!     

#LaborDay #LaborDay2026 #ToledoLaborHistory #ToledoOhio #OhioLabor #AmericanLaborMovement #WorkingFamilies #OhioWorkers #OhioWorkersComp #WorkersCompensation #UnionHistory #LaborHistory #WorkplaceSafety #NorthwestOhio #LawOfficesOfKurtMYoungustomizing