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Editorial

Workers' Comp
The culture of entitlement, in which someone else always is to blame for your problems and someone else’s money always is available to pay for the solutions, has arrived in one of the most unusual places — the state’s workers’ comp system.

You remember workers’ comp, or at least the theory behind the government-mandated program. Around since the Depression, it’s one of the most beneficial outgrowths of the constant tension between labor and management. Under workers’ comp, labor and management acknowledge the inevitability of on-the-job accidents and agree that it’s most important in those unfortunate events to provide the injured employer with partial replacement wages until he can return to work. Management agrees to put up the money to pay those benefits with the explicit admission by labor that doing so does not constitute any admission of guilt for the injury.

From that long-winded explanation of what workers’ comp is, you should easily infer what workers’ comp is not. It is not a blanket insurance policy. It is a program whose benefits are narrowly defined by how, when and where workers do their jobs.

Or it was until a string of decisions in recent years by the N.C. Court of Appeals and the N.C. Supreme Court turned workers’ comp into something else entirely. Not otherwise known as havens for social activism, the courts obviously view workers’ comp as a cash cow that must pay up even for accidents that can only laughingly be called on-the-job injuries

The most recent example is a ruling by the Court of Appeals that Parkdale Mills must pay disability benefits and medical expenses to an employee who wanted to slip away from work a few minutes early. Apparently not wanting to be seen leaving by the front door, the employee chose to exit via the rear parking lot, which was enclosed by a barbed wire-topped, six-foot-tall chain link fence. He climbed the fence, fell and broke his leg.

The Court of Appeals said Parkdale Mills must pay up even through the accident did not occur on the job and was entirely the result of the employee’s own negligence. As a precedent for this logic-defying conclusion, the court sited the case of a Hydro Print worker who got workers’ comp benefits when he hurt his knee racing other employees to see who was the fastest. They were supposed to be on a rest break at the time.

The message for employers from these cases, detailed in the state government report on page 20, is that you can be held responsible for every conceivable accident that could happen on your property. The message for the General Assembly is that the legislature needs to act quickly to rein in the courts and return workers’ comp to its intended purpose. -- Steve Tuttle

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