Following a contested hearing in the New Jersey Division of Workers’ Compensation in Mercer County, a Workers’ Compensation judge awarded a 70-year-old union bricklayer from Trenton permanent disability benefits in excess of $101,000 for injuries he sustained falling from a scaffold.
The injured worker also retained the right to seek additional medical treatment for these job related injuries at the expense of his former employer’s Workers’ Compensation insurance company for a period of two years from the date of payment of this award. He retains the right to seek additional disability benefits during the initial two years, as well, should his condition worsen from these construction accident injuries.
According to New Jersey Workers’ Compensation & Disability attorney, Gary E. Adams, his client was working as a labor union bricklayer at a construction site in June, 2002 when he lost his balance and fell from a scaffold. The experienced bricklayer sustained injuries to his hips and legs. As the result of these construction accident injuries, he was unable to return to work as a bricklayer and is able to ambulate only with the assistance of a cane.
Gary E. Adams, a Certified New Jersey Workers’ Compensation Trial Lawyer and partner in the law firm of Pellettieri Rabstein & Altman representing the labor union bricklayer at trial, indicated that the insurance carrier refused to voluntarily pay benefits for permanent disability, relying on their medical evaluators’ opinions that the worker had fully recovered from his construction accident injuries.
The New Jersey Workers’ Compensation Judge rejected the opinions offered by the employer’s insurance company medical evaluators and found that the injured worker had sustained permanent damage that precluded him from returning to his prior occupation as a bricklayer. The judge also ordered the Workers’ Compensation insurance company to pay 60% of the attorney fee awarded.
Pellettieri Rabstein & Altman, founded locally in Trenton NJ, has represented people injured on and off the job, as well as representing labor unions, since 1929. The law firm now ranked one of the largest in New Jersey and given the highest rating of “AV” by the Martindale-Hubbell Legal Directory, meets clients at offices in Princeton, Mount Holly and Nutley – central, south and north – New Jersey offices.
