A Painful Step in Addressing the Opioid Epidemic: An Overview of the 2016 CDC Guidelines

The growing epidemic of chronic opioid use and addiction, and its consequences, permeates the American medical and legal landscape.  Since the spike in the use of ubiquitous pain medications in the late 1990s, there has been little actual oversight in the health care industry to regulate the prescription of these highly addicting drugs.  In March…

Sexual Orientation Discrimination: EEOC Initiates its Next Title VII Challenge

A new era of discrimination lawsuits is upon employers nationwide.  Last month, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) filed its first lawsuits alleging sexual orientation discrimination under Title VII against employers in Pennsylvania and Maryland.  The lawsuits are the latest step by the Commission to confirm its view that “sex” discrimination under Title VII…

History of Workers’ Compensation, Part III, Emergence of the Modern-Day System

This is the final piece of a three-part series surveying the history of workers’ compensation. Prior to 1911, an individual residing in the United States, regardless of their state residency, who suffered a workplace injury could only recover damages by utilizing traditional tort based law. In other words, an injured worker would need to sue…

Personnel Files in Colorado: Who owns the file and what privacy interests are involved?

This is a question that I repeatedly see throughout the year and it comes in a variety of contexts. Often times, employers who may have recently terminated an employee, are suddenly posed with a request from that former employee for his/her personnel file. Sometimes, within a workers’ compensation or other employment related claim, the worker…

The History of Workers’ Compensation Part II: The Rise of Workers’ Compensation Coverage

This second segment, of the three part series on the history of workers’ compensation law, briefly summarizes how the industrial revolution fueled the workers’ compensation system. The first resemblances of workers’ compensation insurance coverage primarily arose because of increased revolutionized industrial practices and socialist schisms in European political ideals. Around the 1860s, the industrial revolution was…

History of Workers’ Compensation Law: Part 1, Ancient Beginnings

The modern day workers’ compensation system has a long, and often dark, history. The concept of an individual’s right to recover monetary compensation for sustaining an injury caused by another is one of the oldest legal concepts in recorded human history. One observer has pointed out that “the history of workers’ compensation begins shortly after…