When you sustain an injury during the course and scope of your employment and file a claim for workers’ compensation, both you and your employer have some choices. We can assure you that your employer will make decisions in their best interest so it’s important for you to understand the process and know your rights, particularly when it comes to accepting light duty work.

The first step is to seek medical treatment after which your medical professional (doctor, physicians assistant, psychologist, chiropractor, etc.) will generally issue you restrictions. First and foremost, we at Meuser Law Office P.A. advise our clients to get these restrictions from your treating physician in writing. Documentation is key to successfully navigating the workers’ compensation system. The restrictions can be more general or it can describe exactly what tasks you can and cannot perform in your current physical capacity. Often times these restrictions prevent injured workers from performing the vast majority of their prior job functions.

If you haven’t already done so, you need to immediately seek medical care treatment if you have any type of work injury that requires medical care. Oftentimes, an employee may try to hold off on seeking the care. The problem with that is if you do not seek medical care treatment, then your rights do not become vested, and oftentimes employees will wait for a certain time to go by. Oftentimes they’ll think “Well, it’s not that bad, I don’t want to be seen as one of those people who file a workers’ compensation claim” or “I think it will go away after a couple weeks”.

Minnesota has a long history of protecting workers. In fact, Minnesota and New York were the first states to adopt “occupational disease presumptions” into the law. Prior to the adoption of these presumptions of causation, an injured party had the burden of proving that the injury or disease arose out of the course and scope of his or her employment.

At first glance, it makes sense to require the injured party to “connect the dots” between the injury or condition and the activities he or she performed as a part of the job; however, as a practical matter, this requirement precluded injured workers from obtaining a remedy under the Workers’ Compensation Act. For example, if a worker contracted lung cancer from his contact with dangerous work-place fumes, proving that the fumes he was exposed to at work caused the cancer would be difficult, if not impossible. Causation is difficult in these cases because the cancer could have been caused by many different things, such as a genetic predisposition or exposure to cigarette smoke, and doctors are unable (or unwilling) to state to a reasonable degree of medical certainty what the “true” cause of the condition is.

If you have a potentially career ending injury, you should immediately consult with a Minnesota attorney who practices in PERA and MSRS disability law. Although it may be too soon to determine if you can return to work, you should still consult with an attorney right away to learn about your options. If you wait two years after your work injury it may be too late to apply for PERA or MSRS Duty Disability benefits.

To receive Duty Disability benefits, Minnesota police officers, deputy sheriffs, firefighters, and corrections officers must show that he or she has a condition that is expected to prevent him or her from performing “the normal duties” of his or her position for a period of twelve months as “a direct result of an injury incurred during the performance of inherently dangerous duties that are specific to” the position of police officer. See Minn. Stat. § 353.01, subd, 41. Members of the police and fire plan must show:

• The injury will persist for over one year
• The injury was sustained while performing inherently dangerous duties specific to the position
• The disablement is a direct result of the injury