Law Commons^™

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Ptsd) Coverage And Other Expanding Benefit Changes In The Workers’ Compensation Insurance Marketplace: Academic Legal Perspective, Michael C. Duff

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This paper discusses the increased use of causation presumptions in workers' compensation cases involving firefighters and other first responders. It also considers increasing workers' compensation coverage of post traumatic stress disorder with respect to those same categories of workers. The paper discusses how workers' compensation coverage of certain conditions tends to parallel the growth of potential tort liability, observes that disease presumptions were a feature of early 20th century workers' compensation statutes (and so are not new), and argues that recognition of workers' compensation "mental-mental" claims has been consistent with "zone of danger" expansion of the negligent infliction of emotional …

All The World’S A Platform?: Some Remarks On 'Marketplace Platform' Employment Laws, Michael C. Duff

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This paper addresses the enactment of marketplace platform laws, which have arisen as a remarkable feature of the "gig" economy in recent years. A marketplace platform law decides the question of whether an individual worker is an independent contractor or an employee — an ongoing controversy in all employment law, including workers’ compensation law — by emphasizing factors other than those normally considered in traditional legal analyses. As of this writing, seven states appear to have enacted marketplace platform laws.

In short, marketplace platform laws — developed substantially and lobbied aggressively by the company Handy, Inc. — make it much …

Center For Progressive Reform Report: Protecting Workers In A Pandemic--What The Federal Government Should Be Doing, Thomas Mcgarity, Michael C. Duff, Sidney A. Shapiro

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The "re-opening" of the American economy while the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is still circulating puts workers at heightened risk of contracting the deadly virus. In some blue-collar industries, the risk is particularly acute because of the inherent nature of the work itself and of the workplaces in which it is conducted. And the risk, for a variety of reasons, falls disproportionately on people of color and low-income workers. With governors stay-at-home orders and other pandemic safety restrictions, Center for Progressive Reform Member Scholars Thomas McGarity, Michael Duff, and Sidney Shapiro examine the federal government's many missed opportunities to stem …