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Justin Brady: From Iowa podcast.com, I’m Justin Brady, and if you get hurt on the job or injured at work, what is your case worth? Exactly. How do you figure that out? It’s a great question. And that’s the topic of today’s discussion with Iowa Workers’ rights attorney Nate Boulton with Hedberg and Bolton. Thanks for coming back in the studio.

Nate Boulton: Always good to join you.

Justin Brady: Yeah, it’s always a fun conversation. I was just telling you before we, we started recording how I learned like so much, sometimes my brain hurts after this, but, um, what that is the question though is there is this, as we’ve discussed before, there is this major spectrum with work injuries, so. small award, We, we hear jury cases, they’re like small awards. There are large awards. Is that just two buckets or is there a spectrum? Maybe this is a good place to start is what is someone’s injury actually worth when it comes to work comp?

Nate Boulton: Yeah. So, uh, it may surprise people to hear That’s usually not the first question people ask. Right. I think there are a lot of assumptions about what lawsuits or litigation are about and why people call attorneys. Most of the time people are not calling me saying, Hey, I think my case is worth a whole bunch of money. Mm-hmm. Usually they’re calling me because there’s a specific problem that. They want a solution for, uh, we’ve talked about some of those in, in our our prior interviews, right? We’ve got disputes over medical care, right? Can I get to a better doctor disputes over returning to work with or without accommodations, right? People calling up an attorney saying, Hey, what can I do about this. I’m concerned about This surgery that isn’t getting scheduled or getting sent to, to work too soon. But then that third question is going to be, Hey, if this is a permanent, injury. What, what’s my case worth? Like I, now I’m starting to, to worry about my family budget after this injury has happened. What, what does the other side look like? Uh, what, once I’ve, I’m done with surgery and I’m, recovered, then what? And the, then what is, how do I support myself with missing income? And the, the answer is, there are a whole lot of factors that go into. What your case is worth. and we can go over some of those.

Justin Brady: So what is the difference between like a small award and a large award in a jury trial then? Is there a spectrum or are they just two buckets? Yeah,

Nate Boulton: and, and and this is another thing that I think people have, a misconception of. somebody did something really bad does that case have more value or less value? as opposed to what was the bad outcome? to the victim, the person that was the subject of that bad conduct. Um, somebody can do something really, really bad to somebody else, but if it doesn’t actually cause damages. that case usually isn’t worth very much.

Justin Brady: Oh, interesting. A

Nate Boulton: miss. Right.

Justin Brady: Some

Nate Boulton: who. very close to killing somebody in a car accident, but instead they just clipped the. the front of the car and they may have been, you know, highly intoxicated, they may have been on drugs. They, a lot of different factors as to why this person made a really bad decision and put me at risk. But if they Didn’t actually, harm you.

Justin Brady: the

Nate Boulton: The case is gonna have limited damages, right? Replacing the value of the vehicle. That was lost, as opposed to somebody who commits a really egregious decision and costs somebody their life. Huge difference. So even in cases where, um, you know, somebody falls off a roof and has to be life-flighted somewhere, tho Those things certainly are are compelling of how that injury affected that person immediately, But if they make a full recovery. and They’re back to work and things are good outcome from surgery or, and everything. worked out fine, that Case certainly is not gonna be worth as much as one where somebody falls off a roof is life-flighted and isn’t ever able to work. again and is left. Quadriplegic or paraplegic, you know, tho Those, that’s gonna change things as it should, right? The person that has the much worse outcome for the rest of their life should have the better case to be made whole than the person who nearly had that bad outcome, but actually. came out okay?

Justin Brady: So, damages at work, um, work comp or damages awarded through a jury trial. I, there’s a spectrum here too, but it’s not necessarily the injury or the incident. It’s how fast and how well did your body recover in most cases. So if you have two people, like two construction workers talking and one’s like, oh yeah, that exact same thing happened to me. What? Why? Why are you getting all this, like all all this care? Yeah. Why are you getting compensated in this way? And I. nothing happened to me. You’re saying. Yeah, That’s kind of how the system works. It’s designed that

Nate Boulton: Yes, correct. And that’s probably one of the most frustrating things for me to have to answer and people have to hear the answer. Hey, my buddy Larry, uh, had the rotator cuff surgery and got $80,000. You’re telling me my case is only worth 10? How can that be? We both had the same surgery Well, I I don’t know Larry. I don’t know what Larry’s case is, but you may have a 25. pound lifting restriction, and Larry had a 10 pound lifting restriction. Oh gosh, You could go back to work. He couldn’t. I mean, There are so many of those variables. so it’s

Justin Brady: really hard

Nate Boulton: to say, oh, I had this injury. What’s the case worth? Because the, the, the first question’s going to be, how did it affect your earning capacity? How long were you off work recovering? Um, and then of course, is it, is it a work related injury or is this an automobile accident or is this, you know, some other negligence type of a claim? Um, that’s gonna factor in because work comp is a very structured system. It’s designed to the, the advantage is If you’re off work for a work related injury and the injury is accepted as being work related, you’re getting weekly benefits to replace that lost income. If you’re injured in an auto accident or, or the negligence of someone else has caused you harm outside of the workplace, you don’t get that weekly benefit to replace lost income, but you get to go to a jury and make a claim for damages that are not necessarily in that neat and tidy box of so many weeks of disability. It’s now an issue of. Pain and suffering. Loss of use of the body, loss of wages and income and, and all the other things that factor into a jury’s decision. versus the structured benefits of work comp.

Justin Brady: You are at work and something terrible happens, like your workplace was negligent, they did something stupid, and the result is that you just basically got a gash in your arm. Right? And so you can still work. Nothing really changes. Is that pretty much a Well, because it’s a near miss and because nothing really affected your work. no harm, No foul. Is That kind. even though there was harm, do we kind of just move on and forget it happened basically?

Nate Boulton: Yeah. We ki kind of do in terms of the damages, right, Um, ’cause there is no. Pain and suffering damage in workers’ compensation. If it’s a Workplace injury that is not the result of someone else’s gross negligence or some third party’s fault, if it’s just you were, you know, you’re a tire builder and something goes wrong in in the daily work activity and you gash your arm, But you’re able to work the next day, you maybe get some stitches, but you’re back to full duty right away. You don’t miss any days of work. There’s not really much of a claim there. Skin disfigurement. only really applies to people that are models and and actors, and it would affect their income. interesting. Right? So because there’s no functional. loss to the arm and you’re back to work. Yeah. The, the, the company or the company’s insurance carrier has to provide medical care, but you’re not missing any work and you’re not gonna have any functional disability. Yeah. That near miss does, Doesn’t entitle you to. weekly work comp benefits.

Justin Brady: if you work in a high heat environment, you should probably have a modeling career on the side.

Nate Boulton: Always good to have that. secondary modeling career Absolutely. always good. No, no downside, No downside, to have that. it’s always good

Justin Brady: have the secondary modeling career kind of reminds me of like I can see a construction worker and Ben Stiller in that like hard hat. And he’s in the coal mine. That kind of, that kind of reminds

Nate Boulton: that’s, right.

Justin Brady: Next time with Nate. We’re talking about that. Yeah. you’re, So there. maybe these are the same thing? or maybe these Are different, but we have been talking about personal injury and then we’ve been talking about workers’ comp. Are those the same thing, Are those different things or is this one of those? It depends.

Nate Boulton: It depends. Usually. Usually work comp is completely separate, So, um, Iowa Law in Most states, say if it’s an injury that arises out of or in the course of employment, your exclusive Remedy against your employer is workers’ compensation. If you go, uh, uh, you have a co-employee who’s grossly negligence or who’s grossly negligent, does something incredibly stupid, that they have no regard for the safety of others. that person can be sued. separately for their their own negligence. But As a general rule, absent gross negligence or some third party. causing the harm that you don’t work for, you’re limited to workers’ compensation benefits for that workplace injury.

Justin Brady: workers’ comp. Okay. Got it. So work. So I guess if there was a really quick definition, I don’t know if there is, is there a really quick, easy definition between personal injury and workers’ comp? Like personal injury is and workers’ comp is

Nate Boulton: personal injury is basically everything else, right? Any other time you are. harmed by the negligence or intentional conduct of someone else, you’re in personal injury. It’s Just if it happens at work, that’s when it’s limited to the work comp benefits. Unless you can prove gross negligence, someone who went way above and beyond any reasonable standard of care and borderline. intentionally hurt you,

Justin Brady: That is a great definition. Okay, so you have also been talking about, and this sounds ticky tack, I promise it’s not, But you’ve been talking about injury at work and then every time you say that, you go into like almost this definition mindset. Yeah. And so that, that, means I have to ask the question. How do we actually define injury at work It sounds like there are criteria Yeah. that qualify that,

Nate Boulton: yeah. So the, the, the long phrase. is injuries that arise out of or in the course of, employment. yeah, So arising out of, so maybe I didn’t get hurt directly at, where I might, might not have been physically at the workplace when my rotator cuff actually tore, But my 20 years building tires at Firestone. Frayed and frayed. and frayed my rotator cuff. So when I sneezed at home, it finally felt injured. I go to check it out. The Sneeze didn’t. injure me. It was the 20 Years of repetitive work activities, right? So that that’s where the arise out of comes in. Otherwise, in the course of I’m at work, and a pallet falls on me, that’s in the course of employment.

Justin Brady: How do like the injury itself, I know there are a few criteria that determine how you move forward with a case. There’s the injury itself, there’s the job itself. there’s family and life outside work and like how it impacts those. And then there are definitions around, and this is the crazy one. Around who else is impacted, right? And then there’s definitions around pain. I don’t know if you wanna break any of those down with the last few minutes, but that is a, that is a, word jumble. So,

Nate Boulton: yeah, that’s again, it when we switch from work comp to personal injury, right? Those are the kind of those additional factors that get treated very differently between the two. So pain itself is not compensated into workers’ compensation unless it affects. how you use the part of the body that’s injured. So if it’s Limited by pain and affects the range of motion that goes into an impairment rating, or the pain, is severe and has caused a mental injury, right? You have severe pain that keeps you up at night, It causes anxiety, depression, something like that. On the flip side, and we go into the personal injury aspect, well now pain and suffering is something the jury considers as a separate element of damages. Interesting. and and that’s where it’s really hard to figure out what pain is worth, right? We all experience pain different ways. I, I, I frequently tell my clients when they’re asked to describe their pain, is it shooting, stabbing, throbbing, searing? About three or four of those things mean the exact same thing, to me. right. right. I throbbing, I can put in a different category. I remember. I’ve experienced throbbing pain before, but shooting, searing, stabbing, I, I don’t know. It hurts. Yeah.

Justin Brady: Mm-hmm.

Nate Boulton: is what, what I can say. And it’s really hard for people to be able to define and express that. And so that’s where. having an attorney be able to help you translate that feeling to a jury to figure out, okay, what, what is that worth? That that person has gone through incredible pain for a period of months or for the rest of their life? how do we put a value on that? Right? What does that what does that mean in terms of. That person’s life. And you look at those other factors, right? How does it affect their interactions with their Kids? How does interactions with their spouse, how does it, their, their ability to work? Now we start to kind of put context to it, um, but really, Really, difficult thing And going back to what’s my case worth We only know when either the case settles or a jury tells us. in that personal injury world.

Justin Brady: Right. What is a breakdown then, I guess last question. Yeah. How do we calculate then the damages? What are the broad categories? cause you, you were talking to me in advance of this, that there’s like economic. Non-economic and separate and rare. Are those basically the three breakouts and Yeah, that kind of gives people a general idea of, of, uh, what damages could be.

Nate Boulton: Right. So in the work comp world, there’s temporary disability and permanent disability. That’s what is, is actually paid to the injured worker. Uh, medical benefit separate from that. But that’s the, the the damages that the worker would receive in the personal injury world. There are those Economic damages. those are the things you can put into a calculator. How many hours of work. Did you miss? What is your projected? lost earning capacity? Long term, we can, we can plug those things into a formula and present those to a jury. What was the cost of your medical care? Right? The non-economic damages. are the things like pain and suffering, emotional distress,

Justin Brady: Mm,

Nate Boulton: the, the loss of use of the body. What is, What is the value? of not having your right arm? Right. Yeah, Like that. What’s the, you can’t plug that into a calculator, right? Yeah. So, So, now we have to tell the jury, What’s the way we figure out a number for that? Is it related to the medical benefits? Is it related to the earning capacity or is it just something else? And then the, the rare and, and and often we don’t see it, but if you have Truly egregious context, somebody who showed no disregard for who they were. hurting or, or engaged in intentional conduct meant to harm someone, you can get to punitive damages. Mm, And punitive damages are no longer about making the the plaintiff or claimant whole, it is now about, trying to prevent similar conduct in the future from this defendant and others. And so that’s where you can go, you know, 10 times the amount of other damages. in punitive damages, you know? Yeah. It may have only cost this individual, $200,000, but that’s not gonna be enough to. Change your conduct moving forward. We want we want you to learn a lesson basically. Mm-hmm. And the best way we can teach you to learn. a a lesson here is to make sure You can’t just account for the litigation cost of hurting

Justin Brady: Mm.

Nate Boulton: Now we need punitive damages to deter this conduct, just like you would in a criminal setting. Right. A penalty Versus making someone whole. It’s if you have a victim of a crime, they aren’t made. whole by someone serving a sentence in jail or paying the state money. it’s meant to deter future conduct, and that’s what punitive damages do,

Justin Brady: so that it’s not just a line item in someone’s budget and they’re like, yeah, we accounted for that. We’re not gonna, we’re just gonna keep doing it ’cause it’s this line item.

Nate Boulton: the classic example of that was the Ford Pinto case. There was this memo that that Ford had. that said, here’s what it’s gonna cost us to pay all these litigation claims. Here’s What it’s gonna cost us to actually fix the problem, that we know about in the car that causes it to explode. Paying the claims is cheaper than fix doing the recall and fixing the cars. Geez. So we’ll just pay the claims. We’ll

Justin Brady: doing that. And

Nate Boulton: just keep doing that. When the, the memo became part of the evidence. that’s when juries Were able to say, no, no, no. Punitive Damages are meant to solve this problem. We we’re not gonna let you adjust for human loss, right? A bottom line.

Justin Brady: That’s crazy. conduct needs to be That is crazy. Nate, Bolton, Iowa, workers rights attorney at Hedberg and Bolton. What is the website and how do people get in touch with you? ’cause some of this stuff is, even you’re breaking it down really well, but it also gets very complicated very quickly. So if someone wants to reach out to you and get, I know that you do free consults, you don’t even charge when someone calls. So how do people reach out and get answers?

Nate Boulton: So you can go to our website, workers lawyers.com. and from there you can find contact information for me as well as information about Iowa workers’ compensation Law, personal injury. law. Um, we’re, we’re Always willing to help. Answer questions. Workers

Justin Brady: lawyers.com. Nate Boulton, good to see you again.

Nate Boulton: Always good to be here. Thanks Justin.