Massachusetts Workers’ Compensation Lawyer Blog

An Attleboro man has been indicted on charges that he fraudulently collected more than $53,000 in workers’ compensation benefits while continuing to work. A fifty-seven year old male is charged with workers’ compensation fraud and larceny over $250.Attorney General Martha Coakley stated, “We allege the defendant collected workers’ compensation benefits while working in violation of the law. These benefits are essential to helping individuals that are unable to work as the result of work-related injuries.”

This man suffered a work-related injury in 2005, while he was working on a construction site, and he was eligible to receive temporary total disability benefits from his employer’s insurance company from June 2007 through February 2009.

A man was sent to the hospital with first-degree burns to his face after a propane tank exploded at a glass-bottling plant in Milford. The worker was filling up a forklift’s tank just outside Saint-Gobain Containers, Inc. plant when the propane tank exploded.

A steelworker was rushed to the hospital after falling twenty feet from the roof decking of the new high school under construction in Duxbury.Chief Kevin Nord stated that the worker was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries to his neck, back and torso. He also said that the Braintree office of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) were on their way to investigate the site.

Nord said two men fell from the roof decking, but one was caught by a safety harness and uninjured. The other was wearing a harness, but the cable snapped and the worker fell to the gravel below.

A Framingham Public Works employee was Med-Flighted to a Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston after he was injured by a 14 inch circular blade chop saw. The water department employee, who is in his 20s, suffered a left shoulder injury, but he was conscious and talking at the work site.The employee severely cut an artery in his arm while in the trenches. While working on a sewer issue, a gas-powered saw he was using kicked back and cut him in the shoulder. DPW co-workers used a belt as a tourniquet until first responders arrived on the scene. The Framingham Town manager stated, “They basically saved his life.”

The director of communications for the Massachusetts Office of Labor and Workforce Development stated, “Framingham Police Department notified the (Massachusetts) Department of Labor Standards that a worker for the Framingham Water Authority received serious injuries while working in a trench with a circular saw.”

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) cited J.R. Resources, a natural gas producer and operator, with eight safety and health violations at its Ringgold gas well site. OSHA began its inspection in August of 2012 after a worker died from sustaining injuries during a flash fire because he was not required or provided with flame-resistant clothing.The seven serious violations cited at this work site included failing to require and provide flame-resistant clothing to be work when working near natural gas, failing to provide fall protection from stairs on brine tanks, failing to provide a written hazard communication program and training, and failing to properly label tanks, and prevent workers from riding in the bucket of a backhoe.

J.R. Resources was also cited for using an electric pump in the presence of flammable materials. A serious citation is issued when there is substantial probability that death or serious physical harm could result and the employer new, or should have known, of the hazard.

A truck weighing approximately 140,000 pounds slid backwards and crushed the legs of a worker beneath its rear tires at a commuter rail work site. The man in his 40s works for J.F. White Contracting Co., which is currently working on the commuter rail tracks rehabilitating the Shawsheen River bridges off Lupine Road.At the time of the injury, the worker was trying to attach a heavy equipment trailer to the truck. Police and firefighters arrived to find the man pinned under and between two of the rear tires on the left side of the tractor-trailer.

The trailer was carrying an earth-mover and low-drill attachment that was being taken to another construction site. The fire chief stated that while connecting the trailer to the tractor, the truck operator’s lower extremities became pinned under the rear wheels of the tractor.

A construction worker fell 30 feet off of a building in Alston, but escaped serious injury because he landed a bubble wrap, stated a Boston Fire Department spokesman. A 38 year old man lost his balance while working on a building on Commonwealth Avenue and fell through the wooden planking of the scaffolding.Firefighters had to cut him free from the bubble wrap, and he went to the hospital to be treated for back and shoulder injuries.

The building is covered in bubble wrap during construction to keep the heat and dust in and to black any winds. The Boston Fire Department spokesperson said, “The plastic was covering the entire side of the building and engulfed him. We had to slice the plastic away so the medics could treat him.”

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has cited Amilicar Samper Perez, under the name Roof Systems, for alleged repeat and serious violations of workplace safety standards while its workers were installing a roof. The contractor faces a total of $44,880 in fines for fall hazards.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) cited DeFelice, Inc for alleged willful and serious safety violations at a Nashua, N.H. work site. The contractor faces a total of $55,660 in proposed fines for excavation and other hazards.

OSHA inspectors watched an employee working in an inadequately guarded excavation that was more than eight feet deep. OSHA standards require that trenches or excavations five feet or deeper must be protected against collapse.

This resulted in a willful citation carrying a fine of $38,500. A willful violation is one committed with intentional, knowing or voluntary disregard for the law’s requirements, or with plain indifference to worker safety and health.

Norfolk Southern Railway Co. has been ordered by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to pay $1,121,099 to three workers after finding that the company violated the whistleblower provisions of the Federal Railroad Safety Act.