If I settle my case am I going to have to quit my job?

Often, but not always, an employer will ask you to resign as part of a certain type of settlement. Those settlements usually are significantly larger than being paid for your rating. When you take your rating it is extremely unlikely that you’d be asked to resign.

The reason that an employer may do this is that the insurance company is paying you to give up their obligation for your future medical care. So say they give you $50,000.00 to give up the right to medical care for your back. And then six weeks later you blow out your back again… that $50k is in your pocket and you have a whole new claim. Which is going to cost them a bunch of money again.

We’ve had potential clients tell us that their employer fired everyone who filed workers’ compensation claims. Many times we’ve represented the “fired” employee and they, in fact, were not fired at all. Their employer had paid them a lot of extra money to get them to resign. This was something that our clients considered and willingly did because it fit into their goals. Many of them had other jobs lined up, some were ready to retire, and others were planning on staying home and raising a family. Why would an employer spread the rumor that these people had been fired? A possible answer is that the rumor was intended to deter other workers from filing workers’ compensation claims. Think about it… if you ran a company and wanted to prevent people from filing workers compensation claims would you say that people who had claims got paid tens, or hundreds of thousands of dollars? Or would you quietly create an atmosphere of fear and let potential claimants wonder if they’re going to lose their job and be destitute.

One last thing while we are on this point. If you’re employer has changed insurance companies while your claim was going on it is much more likely that you can settle the case – even get the extra money for giving up future medical care – because that insurance company is no longer paying for your employer’s new claims. So the need to get you out of there isn’t an issue anymore.