Facebook Photos Doomed Workers' Comp Claim
Facebook Photos Doomed Workers' Comp Claim
(CN) - A retailer and its insurance company properly used pictures of a worker drinking and partying to fight claims that he deserved workers' compensation for a hernia, the Arkansas Court of Appeals ruled.
Zackery Clement was injured in 2009 when the refrigerator he was moving fell on him.
Johnson's Warehouse Showroom and National Union Fire Insurance paid for Clement's medical expenses and about two years worth of temporary disability benefits.
After Clement asked for coverage for additional medical treatment for his hernia and a back injury, however, an administrative law judge and the state workers' compensation commission declined his request.
http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/02/01/43549.htm
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make a choice the cost of one night of celebrating is worth whatever increase in pain they may have, they forfeit the right to be treated for the injury. 
Assuming additional coverage was denied, it was a decision by someone who has clearly never lived with chronic pain. (It isn't clear from the article that additional coverage was denied, but it appears likely because the decision was on appeal.)
I've seen far too many people with a condition I have (mine is not from work) destroyed by the worker's comp system that is not well set up to deal with chronic pain, and people with chronic pain need occasional splurges just to keep from being completely emotionally devastated by the prospect of never getting out from under the pain. So I hate what these pictures likely did to the "fraud" they theoretically exposed.
That said, from a legal standpoint the pictures probably were admissible, and it was stupid to put them where they could be seen by workers comp.
