FEDERAL WORKERS' COMPENSATION OVERRULES OWN DENIALS; AWARDS BENEFITS

In this claim for federal workers' compensation benefits from the USDOL "Office of Workers' Compensation Programs" (OWCP), the client had filed a claim for an on the job injury to her back due to improper work placement. The OWCP repeatedly denied her claim finding that the client had failed to provide medical evidence of injury and provided no witnesses to any injury.

The client rightfully continued with her appeal to the OWCP. On appeal we argued that per the OWCP's own case decisions, an on the job injury in the federal workplace does not have to be confirmed by eyewitnesses in order to establish that the work incident had indeed occurred.

In fact, we showed that per the OWCP's own internal reports and experts, this left-handed client was admittedly wrongly placed by the federal employer into a right-handed work station causing her to literally work in a hunched, backward position.

And despite contentions by the government that the workstation had been ergonomically designed, we showed that the federal agency own records revealed that no ergonomic training had been provided to the client.

As regards any alleged lack of medical evidence of injury we showed the claimant had properly and dutifully submitted years of medical treatment reports that the OWCP had simply and wrongly ignored. We argued on appeal that the OWCP cannot simply ignore the medical evidence of record and then claim that no injury occurred due to lack of medical evidence.

These arguments on appeal were successful and that USDOL OWCP reversed its prior decisions denying her claim for federal worker's compensation and awarded her full benefits