By Benjamin T. King – New Hampshire Employment Lawyer

By Benjamin T. King – New Hampshire Workers’ Compensation Lawyer

An employee’s ability to obtain workers’ compensation benefits for a disabling work injury often depends on the content of the employee’s medical records. If you neglect to tell your doctor that you were hurt at work, this innocent oversight could prove fatal to your workers’ compensation claim.

Doctors generally prepare detailed records of their visits with their patients. These records describe, among other things, the patient’s symptoms and the circumstances under which the patient states the injury occurred. If the employee states that the injury occurred at work, the doctor should note this in the patient’s records and should complete a New Hampshire Workers’ Compensation Medical Form. If the patient neglects to tell the doctor that the injury occurred at work, the medical record will contain no evidence of the work-related nature of the injury, and no New Hampshire Workers’ Compensation Medical Form will get completed.

The lack of any reference in the medical records to an employee’s injury having occurred at work can result in the employee being denied workers’ compensation benefits. In a recent New Hampshire Department of Labor decision, a hearing officer determined that an employee had failed to meet his burden to prove by competent medical evidence that his injury was work-related. The hearing officer therefore denied the employee workers’ compensation benefits. In that case, the medical records described the injury, but the records failed to note that the injury occurred at work.

Do not fall into this trap. Just be sure to tell your doctor that your injury happened at work. Ask your doctor to make sure to state that the injury occurred at work in the medical records. If your doctor does not complete a New Hampshire Workers’ Compensation Medical Form, remind him or her to do so.

If you need assistance with your New Hampshire workers’ compensation claim, contact an experienced New Hampshire workers’ compensation attorney at Douglas, Leonard & Garvey, P.C. or fill out our online contact form.

A waitress waited on tables during the week but when she asked to pick up extra shifts on the weekend she agreed to work only for tips until business picked up. After she worked for several hours over weekends she filed a wage claim for unpaid compensation. The New Hampshire Department of Labor hearing officer held that despite the oral agreement that she was only working for tips, the employer was not relieved of its obligation to pay an hourly wage. The waitress was awarded almost $4,000 for the weekends she worked over the year.

Because the employer had not kept accurate employee records it was not able to reduce the amount she claimed she was owed. Employees should get whatever their compensation understandings are in writing. Otherwise, you can end up hoping that you win a Department of Labor hearing. Of course, the employer has the duty to reduce the deal to writing and keep accurate records, though many small employers don’t do that.

As a technician for a heating company providing on-site maintenance and service, the employee was required to travel. Because he was an hourly employee he used a time card and at the end of each work day had to return to the home base of the operation to punch out. The employer and an employee had an oral side agreement that the employee would not be paid for travel time from his last service stop to the employer’s residence which was where the company was located. After the employee filed an unpaid overtime claim he obtained almost $15,000 from the Department of Labor. The employee’s records indicated he was owed approximately a half hour’s pay for each day involved but because the employer could not produce better records, the estimate by the employee was adopted as the proper measure of unpaid wages. Once again, oral side deals can get an employer into trouble.

The New Hampshire Department of Labor (“DOL”) has regulations which protect hourly workers and require that employers pay you in a timely way. The regulations require your employer to pay all wages due within 8 days, including Sundays, after the expiration of the workweek on regular paydays designated in advance. Employers may pay workers less frequently, but have to meet specific DOL requirements. In this day and age, many people have been discharged by work. If that happens, under New Hampshire law, your employer must pay all wages owed within 72 hours either by physically giving payment to the employee or by mailing the payment to the employee, at the employee’s choice.

If you quit work, the employer must pay you in full no later than the next regular payday, or within 72 hours if you are not allowed to work after you tell your employer that you quit. Every employer shall pay without condition and within the required time frames all wages or parts thereof that are due. The employer must pay wages based upon recorded hours and in accordance with written or verbal agreements between you and your employer.

Wage and hour laws and regulations can be complicated but exist to protect employees. If your employer makes a mistake or willfully withholds wages based upon commissions or hourly work, you may have the right to bring a wage claim before the Department of Labor. The process is relatively quick, but an experienced employer lawyer can maximize your chances of recovering wages or commissions that are owed to you. If the DOL finds that wages have willfully been withheld, and the employer had the ability to pay those wages/commissions, you may be able to recover double damages. The lawyers at Douglas, Leonard & Garvey regularly practice before the New Hampshire Department of Labor and are available to help you recover the wages/commissions that you deserve. Call our office at 1-800-240-1988 or fill out our contact form online.

If you suffer a compensable work-related injury, the workers’ compensation carrier must pay the medical bills for all treatment that is reasonable and related to the injury. There is no time limit on this obligation. For so long as the treatment is deemed to be reasonable and related to the injury, the carrier must pay the bills.

Carriers will often try to evade this obligation, however, by arbitrarily denying medical bills. If the injured employee does nothing in response to this, the carrier will get away with not paying the bill. Don’t let the carrier get away with this!

If you are an injured employee, and your workers’ compensation carrier denies a bill for treatment that your medical providers believe is reasonable and related to your work injury, you should appeal the denial to the New Hampshire Department of Labor within 18 months of the date the carrier denies the bill.

You should enlist the aid of an experienced workers’ compensation attorney if you find yourself having to appeal the denial of a medical bill. The attorney will not charge you anything to represent you on a medical bill issue before the Department of Labor. How does the attorney get paid? If the attorney prevails for you, and obtains a Department of Labor Order requiring the carrier to pay the disputed bills, the carrier must pay your attorney’s fees. The carrier must also pay the injured employee’s attorney’s fees if the carrier denies a bill, forcing an employee to request a Department of Labor hearing, and then reverses its position and accepts the bill fewer than seven (7) business days before the hearing date. This new provision in the law, which became effective January 1, 2011, is designed to discourage workers’ compensation carriers from “playing games” with an injured employee’s medical bills.

Some carriers try to avoid their obligation to pay medical bills by ignoring them. Instead of issuing denial letters, they simply do nothing. Carriers break the law when they ignore medical bills. New Hampshire law requires carriers to either accept or deny medical bills within 30 days of receiving them. Specifically, within 30 days of receiving a medical bill the carrier must either a.) pay the bill; or b.) deny the payment, with notice to the health care provider, the injured employee, and the Department of Labor. A denial letter must state a valid reason for the denial and must advise the injured employee of the right to petition for a hearing.

If your carrier ignores your medical bills, failing to pay them or properly deny them within 30 days, you or your attorney should notify the Department of Labor so that the Department may take appropriate enforcement action. Call Douglas, Leonard & Garvey or fill out our contact form if you are having problems getting your medical bills paid.