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Bill would address how comp claims are ruled compensable

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Injured compensation

Nevada lawmakers are now considering a bill that would put the onus on employers to prove a work injury is not compensable, instead of existing law that put the responsibility at the hands of an injured party who has to prove the injury arose within the scope of employment.

A.B. 138, with 22 sponsors and now with the Committee on Commerce and Labor, was introduced Thursday. It flips the current law that “requires that a claim by an injured employee for compensation… be decided on its merit and not according to the principle of common law that requires statutes governing workers compensation to be liberally construed because they are remedial in nature,” according to a legislative counsel’s digest. 

“This bill requires such a claim to be decided under a liberal construction of those statutes in favor of the injured employee or his or her dependents,” the digest states. “Existing law provides that an injured employee or his or her dependents are not entitled to receive compensation under industrial insurance unless the employee or dependents establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the injury arose out of and in the course of employment.”

This bill states that “the injured employee or dependents are entitled to receive such compensation unless the employer establishes by clear and convincing evidence that the injury did not arise out of and in the course of employment.”

The bill also states that an employee’s injury shall be deemed to have arisen out of and in the course of employment unless there is “clear and convincing evidence to the contrary or except  under circumstances where certain statutory provisions establish other standards of proof.”

The bill would also penalize payers who deny claims that ultimately prevail after a requested hearing. 

 

 

 

 

 

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