Chris Cahill on Workers’ Compensation & Employee Rights | The AICA Podcast Ep 8

Alex (00:15): Good morning, and welcome back to the AICA Podcast. Today I have Chris on. Chris, say good morning.

Chris (00:22): Good morning. How are you doing today?

Alex (00:24): I’m good. How are you?

Chris (00:25): I’m another fantastic day.

Alex (00:27): Good. Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Chris (00:31): My name’s Chris Cahill. I’m a workers compensation attorney in the state of Georgia, working out of Marietta, but I take cases all over the state of Georgia. I’ve been an attorney for about 10 years, doing workers compensation for about five years. I started out representing insurance defense companies, learning how they worked, how they run the claims, how they. They work with the law. And then I switched to the good side. So now I actually represent injured worker Pete workers. People who are hurt on the job. Yeah. People who really need help navigating the system, because it’s a big, complex system, and there’s not a lot of help out there for it.

Alex (01:05): Yeah, absolutely. So what made you want to become an attorney? Or did you know when you were very, very small that you wanted to help people?

Chris (01:14): I decided I really wanted to be a lawyer. Probably my second year of law school when I was growing up. Uh, let’s see. Where does it start, this story? Yeah, so it was in high school, actually. My sister got arrested for a. A minor marijuana charge, and she was five years older than me. She was in school, but due to the laws at the time in the state, she ended up getting kicked out of college and losing scholarships. And it. It essentially derailed her entire life over a small marijuana charge. And I was in high school, and I started asking, well, why? And the teachers really didn’t have a good answer.

Chris (01:46): Well, gateway theory, all different types of things about that have now been debunked about why, you know, marijuana is the worst thing in the world. And I kept arguing with them about it, and finally they just told me to shut up. And so I didn’t really like that. And so I learned more about the politics, about the legal systems, and about what we can do as individuals to help that. And so that kind of directed me through college towards law school. And I ended up going to law school and. And figuring out ways that I can actually help people. So that was my first five years of practicing law, was doing criminal defense and helping people who are accused of crimes and navigating that legal system. After five years, let’s see.

Chris (02:28): Met my current wife and moved to Marietta and started looking for jobs around Marietta, one of the law firms here, was a big defense firm. They said, well, I wanted for an interview, and they asked about my experience. And I’d done DUI trials, murder trials, everything from traffic tickets to serious violent felonies. I said, well, if you can do a murder trial, you can certainly do worker’s comp. So spent a couple of years learning workers comp from their side and then decided to switch over to the good side, actually help people.

Alex (02:55): Nice. Okay, so can you tell me a little bit about workers comp? Like, pretend I’m a fifth grader, Explain what you’re doing for the people.

Chris (03:04): So about 100 years ago, the legislature decided. Decided that if someone’s hurt at work, the employer needs to cover their medical treatment, then you’d be able to go see a doctor. And if they’re out of work, the employer needs to cover a portion of their lost wages. And that way we can get people who are trying to work, who are doing the right thing, they can get back to work, and they can be all taken care of. So they get back on their feet and be a good, productive member of society again. And that doesn’t involve filing a lawsuit. No one, no one cares whose fault it is. It’s just very direct. If you are hurt on the job, you’re entitled to medical treatment.

Chris (03:40): And if you’re out of work, you’re entitled to a portion of that income.

Alex (03:43): Gotcha. Okay, so is there certain doctors that they need to go to? How does that work? Or they can. They just go to their pcp if.

Chris (03:51): It’s an emergency, you get emergency treatment nearest, right away, just go ahead, call 911, take an ambulance down. The employer insurer, they’ve got to cover all that. The employer is supposed to have a list of doctors. It’s got to have at least six doctors on it. And there’s different ways that they can. They can assemble that list, but they should have that list of doctors. It should be prominently posted somewhere in the workplace, typically in a break room. Could be in a supply area. It can’t be hidden in a closet. It can’t be hidden in a folder somewhere. It’s got to be posted up, and it’s got to have those six doctors on it.

Chris (04:25): And you can choose any of those six doctors to go to or any of the more than six doctors to go to. As long as they’ve got that up and they’re supposed to help you get to that, get to those doctors, arrange those appointments so that you can actually get the treatment that you need. But if they don’t have that list posted, if they don’t explain your rights to you, or if they don’t even help you get to those doctors, then you can go to any doctor you want and the insurance company will have to cover all that.

Alex (04:51): Okay. Okay. So what are a typical worker’s comp claim like for PI? We know it’s a car accident. So is there a typical worker’s comp one?

Chris (05:02): It depends on the industry. So we get a lot of people falling off of ladders, a lot of delivery drivers. As long as they’re employees and not independent contractors. If they get a car wreck that gets covered under workers compensation slips and falls at the workplace. Those are fairly standard. Let’s see, a lot of cuts. Especially with heavy machinery. There’s a lot of ways that machines are very dangerous to work with. And sometimes the employers or the employees will find shortcuts and ways that maybe take off certain safety equipment in order to do their job quicker, better. And that safety equipment. It’s got a point. And sometimes the accident that that safety equipment’s supposed to prevent ends up happening.

Chris (05:41): But that’s the great thing about workers compensation is it’s a no fault system. It doesn’t matter who removed the guard. If, if that guard, if the equipment is on the property, you’re using it for the work, then that gets covered under workers compensation. Yeah, anything that happens at the workplace. So there’s tons of different hazards. Covid was an interesting one for a little while that was going around and people were trying to make Covid into workers compensation claims. But there’s very specific things on that. Yeah, Falls and stairs. Even had dog bites, burns, assault by a customer. That happens every once in a while. Yep. But the whole litany of it. So any type of falls and injuries. Yeah, anything you want to see at a Construction accidents.

Chris (06:24): That happens all the time. The logging industry has a whole lot of ones. And then recently I’ve been getting some attack by robots. Oh, yep. Automated robotic manufactories. And folks are just trying to walk through the line and the robot turns around trying to grab a part and knocks them in the head. That’s a workers top claim.

Alex (06:41): Oh my goodness. Okay, so you know, robots are here and that is why I’m so nice to everything. You know, like when the printer prints me something, I’m like, thank you so much for your service. Because one day they’re going to come back and they’re going to remember me.

Chris (06:52): Oh yeah. And I thank Siri every morning for Telling me the weather.

Alex (06:56): Yeah, exactly. We gotta be good with our manners. So what would be some rights that a. Somebody who’s filing a workers comp claim would have? I want to make sure that everyone knows what their rights are here.

Chris (07:08): Okay. Yeah. The. In Georgia, the employer and the insurer, they’re really supposed to take the reins on it. So you report the injury, you ask for medical treatment, and then they’re supposed to show you. The doctors give you the free choice to pick it. Then they set you up with the appointment. You just need to go to the appointment. If the doctor says you can’t drive, they even have to set you up with, with transportation. They’ll send an Uber out.

Speaker 1 (07:28): Okay.

Chris (07:29): Yeah. And so, yeah, your rights are to all the medical treatment that you need. That doctor who, who you pick, they have a lot of control over the medical treatment. So if the doctor says that you need an mri, the insurance company is supposed to cover that mri. If the doctor says you need to see a specialist, they got to cover the specialist. You need surgery, they cover the surgery. For the most part. How it’s designed is the employee is supposed to essentially sit back, relax, go to the appointments as needed, and do what the doctor says.

Alex (07:57): Okay. Do you have people who are still going to work at this point? They’re still actively going to work, but also getting treatment at the same time?

Chris (08:04): Yeah, yeah, that happens quite a bit. The doctors can choose if you, based on your injury, if you need to have any type of work restrictions, or if you need to be completely out of work, or if you can work without any restrictions and you still need to go to the doctor. Those work restrictions are very important. They prevent your injury, prevent you from getting re injured. They also help your injury get healed faster. So it’s very important to follow those work restrictions. And if your employer can accommodate those work restrictions. For example, if someone were to injure their wrist or their leg and the doctor says, you can’t use that arm or that leg, and the employer says, well, we got a job that you can do sitting down with one arm. Great.

Chris (08:41): You can go back and you can earn all the money that you were earning. That actually tends to help out a lot of people too, because in workers comp, if you’re out of work, you’re entitled to two thirds of your wages up to a certain amount, which is $800 currently. But if you’re working, you’re earning 100% of your wages. So it does help to follow those restrictions and go back to work if possible.

Alex (09:01): I think There’s a common misconception that if you file a worker’s comp claim, you’re going to get fired from your job. I’ve heard that from friends who’ve gotten hurt at work and just kind of kept it to themselves of like, I don’t want to lose this job. Is that something that you see or is that total misconception? Like I said, it’s a.

Chris (09:18): It’s a common misconception. No, you don’t get fired for filing a workers compensation claim. And there’s actually some pretty good protections if the employer does want to fire you, because the workers compensation claim, they would immediately owe you income benefits if you’re on any type of work restrictions. And there’s different federal laws that do come into play with that. But no, you don’t have to worry about getting fired right away just for filing a workers compensation plan right away.

Alex (09:43): You’ll mess up down the road somewhere, and that’s when they’ll get you. Okay, so my favorite question is, what is your craziest case that you’ve had?

Chris (09:52): Craziest case that I’ve had. Oh, goodness. Compared to criminal law workers, cop is very, very ordinary. We got.

Alex (10:00): Okay.

Chris (10:00): I mean, people getting attacked. That’s an interesting one. The robots. Those are a fun one. But yeah, it’s. I mean, usually just ordinary Tuesday, and someone’s walking down the stairs, and they trip and fall down the stairs. Or I. Workers on scaffolding. That’s a very dangerous. Dangerous places to work. I guess the. The biggest, most complex claim I’ve had. It was a. It was a young lady who. Let’s see, she was undocumented, and she fell off of a platform and broke her back and was completely unable to walk. She was airlifted to a hospital. And the way the employment was set up, we had a.

Chris (10:40): It was the people who were running the overall warehouse subcontracted to a group to provide employment, but this particular employee was subcontracted through a third group that didn’t have insurance. So the lady was paralyzed in the hospital for over a month and then had to have all the surgery after that or the. All the therapies after that. Meanwhile, we’re trying to get one of the employers to cover it all. So the people running the warehouse, they were saying that we don’t have liability because it’s the people who are running the staffing. The people running the staffing were saying they don’t have liability because they outsourced it to a third group. And the third group is saying we don’t have liability because we don’t have insurance. They actually did have liability even though they didn’t have insurance.

Chris (11:27): And so it was that middle group is who we ended up getting on the hook for that. But it took quite a few months of them saying, no, we don’t know anything, and where they were trying to say that she was making up like she was a totally different person than the person that worked at the warehouse. They tried every dirty trick under the sun to try to not, not give her what she was owed. Ultimately though, we, we nailed him to the wall on that one. And yeah, we, we ended up finding a pretty good resolution for her.

Alex (11:56): Good. Okay. That’s a happy ending. I love that.

Chris (11:59): Yeah, yeah, I’m sure she’d much rather be able to walk, but.

Alex (12:03): Oh, I was going to ask, did she ever recover?

Chris (12:05): No, not that I know about that. That’s not one that she’s probably going to recover from. But she’s pretty much retired at this point so she can focus on family and you know, getting the most of life in that.

Alex (12:17): Absolutely. I had, I was working a case with an attorney here where somebody was sitting at the front desk at an establishment, I don’t know what kind, and a car drove through the front and smashed him up against the back wall while he was sitting at the desk.

Chris (12:33): Ouch. You can’t park there.

Alex (12:37): Exactly. I’m like reading through the notes in the police report and I’m like, wait a second, this is not normal, this. Like, what is this? And then I actually called the attorney and was like, I need more information on this. Like, what, what happened? What’s going on?

Chris (12:51): So luckily he or something.

Alex (12:54): Yeah, can you guys send that to me? I want to watch it. But I. He wasn’t horribly hurt. I mean enough to have multiple surgeries with us. But he can still walk, he can still do his day to day tasks. But that is a workers comp story that stuck out to me of where he was literally just sitting there, not even moving and something came in a act of God, you know, like somebody drove through the front door and he smushed up against a wall. So I understand that why we need people like you because I don’t know what I would do in that situation.

Chris (13:26): Yeah, there’s a, especially at the work. I mean that’s, that’s an outrageous example because cars have a lot of physics behind them. But yeah, any workplace, especially where you have like manufacturer or, or had loggers clearance sites, any construction where there’s a lot of physics involved, you really don’t want to put your body in between, in between the rock and the hard place with that.

Alex (13:46): Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So I wanted to also ask, is there anybody who, I know you said about your sister that helped you with criminal. Was there anybody that kind of helped you along the way into workers comp?

Chris (13:58): Oh, goodness. Well, the workers compensation community of attorneys is, is very good. The workers compensation bar. There’s probably less than a thousand attorneys in this whole state that really practice workers compensation. There’s a lot of, a lot of attorneys out there that say they take workers compensation claims and they completely mess them up. And, and I end up getting those cases and I’ve got to fix those messes. There’s only about a thousand of us that are really dedicated to it. And so. So, yeah, the community is surprisingly welcoming if you want to take it seriously, you want to get into it and you want to learn all about it.

Chris (14:34): Like the attorneys that I was working with on the defense side, they’re, I think they’re great people even though they work for insurance companies, but they’re excellent folks who taught me a lot about the law, taught me a lot about how it works and how to make it work for, for my, for my clients.

Alex (14:48): Awesome. I love that. So you said you do a little bit of PI now, but mostly workers comp, is that correct? Yeah, I was going to say. So if somebody needs you for workers comp and PI, they can come to you, Correct?

Chris (15:00): Yeah. Typical situation for that is they call me about a, a workers compensation claim. Hey, I was driving and I was a delivery driver and I’m an employee for this company and I was in a car wreck and I need help and I say, okay, great, well, let’s start up the workers compensation with the employer and then also let’s get the information on the car wreck and let’s do the PI claim as well.

Alex (15:21): So for like an Uber or Lyft driver, would they be able to do.

Chris (15:23): Both Uber and Lyft, they’ve got their own special contracts and special ways to do it. They’re usually independent contractors. So the Uber and Lyft drivers, they wouldn’t fall under workers compensation. Workers compensation strictly for employees. But if they are in that type of situation, but they’re an employee for the company, I see Amazon drivers particularly, they tend to work either directly for Amazon or for one of these third party groups that tells them what routes to go, what hours to work, when they need to check in, what their van’s going to look like, all of that and they get in accidents. Yeah, that’s a very common situation.

Alex (15:58): Okay. Yeah. Well, I see a lot. I see a lot of Uber and Lyft MVAs come across my desk on a daily basis. So I always kind of wondered how that worked with, like, are. Is it. Is it a PI claim? Is it a worker’s comp claim? And, you know, now that I’m realizing people are independent contractors, like the Amazon drivers that drive their own car to my house and drop something off, so they’re not exactly in an Amazon van. Would that be a totally separate case as well?

Chris (16:25): Yeah, it. I guess it really depends because the, the law is. Let’s see, for independent contractors versus employee, there’s a bunch of factors they can. That the law looks at. There’s 13 different ones that I’ve identified in different case laws. And it’s not all about whether you’re just a 1099 or how they’re doing the taxes. It’s whether the. What it breaks down to really is if the employer can control the time, manner, and method of your employment. So if they tell you you need to be here at this time, you need to go on this route, you need to deliver these packages in this specific way, then you’re an employee. A lot of it can go to how you’re paid too. So if they’re being paid by the package and they.

Chris (17:05): The employer just says, hey, here’s a box of packages, take it to those addresses and you get paid X much for each package, then that looks like an independent contractor.

Alex (17:14): Okay. Interesting. Okay. I’ve never knew any of this. I like this. I’m so dead set on PI. All, all day, every day. You know, sometimes when a workers comp comes across my desk, I am a little thrown back a little bit. I’m like, okay, how. How does this one work? Like, who, who’s getting sued here? You know, but you said it.

Chris (17:35): Yeah, and it’s not even really a lawsuit. I know a lot of folks, they’re like, oh, it’s a lawsuit against my employer. And no, it’s, it’s a, it’s an administrative proceeding. If there’s any type of disputes with it, like, let’s say the employer just says, no, you weren’t hurt at work. Happens all the time, especially with, with smaller groups. I got a moving company that they had a group of about 20 employees and gentleman throws out his back. Lifting, lifting a table or a bed or a couch or, you know, they’re walking down the stairs, fall backwards and moving company, it’s. You Know, one guy who owns it, manages, sets up everything, and he just says, well, you’re not working any in here. You’re not working here anymore. I don’t want to deal with it.

Chris (18:14): Come on back when you’re fixed. And then their insurance company calls him up because that employee calls me and says, hey, I need help. And so the employer at that point has messed up in a couple different ways that they haven’t reported to their insurance company, they haven’t been provided medical treatment. The hurt person comes to me and I set them up with medical treatment, and I get the insurance company involved. The insurance company calls the employer and the employer says, I’ve never heard of that person in my life. Well, the insurance company, they’re going to take the employer side and they’re going to deny the claim. So I file a, as a hearing request. It’s an administrative hearing.

Chris (18:48): And that opens up discovery, just like you’d see in a lot of personal injury claims where they’ve got to exchange the information. There very likely be a deposition of the client and the, some attorney for the insurance company is going to sit down and ask them how you got the job. And we’re going to pull out the texts between the, the employee and the employer and say, well, yeah, here, very clearly this person was working for that person. And then the employer is in a real bad situation right there. But that’s the only time it really looks like a lawsuit is when, when the insurance company’s not doing their job, the employer’s not doing their job. We gotta make them do their job.

Alex (19:26): So we’re not, we’re not just right off the bat suing?

Chris (19:29): Nope. No.

Alex (19:30): Okay.

Chris (19:31): If they’re doing the right thing, and that’s, I, I would hope, and I don’t have any numbers to back this up, but I would hope. 95% Of workers compensation claims never see any lawyers because it gets reported. Right? The employer does their job, right. The insurance company covers all the bills, the doctors treat the person, the person goes back to work, and it’s all fine and dandy at the end. My mom, she worked for, for Delta, and she was running through, I think it was Milan Airport, and she trips and falls on the carpet and hits her face and gets like, her teeth cut into her lip really bad. Delta Hobson cancels her flight, sends her to the doctor, she gets some stitches, they clean it up, they put her on the next flight.

Chris (20:11): She gets a week out of work and then she comes back to work. And they covered everything. And that actually was A workers compensation claim. It’s filed in a state board of workers compensation. It’s all very well documented. And she kept working with them for another five years after that. And that’s how I hope most claims go. But a lot of them don’t. Either the employers don’t know the. Don’t know what to do, or the insurance companies are just trying to cut corners, and that’s when my clients get me involved and I can really do a lot of good work. Of course, I do have some claims where they say, hey, I was hurt at work. I don’t know what’s going on. They’re sending me to this doctor.

Chris (20:48): What options do I have? And I’m able to guide them through the options. I get to work with the. The insurance adjusters, make sure that the. The treatment’s going well. That’s probably. Probably 10% of my claims right now. They’re. They’re floating. They’re going great. The person’s getting the treatment that they need, they’re getting the benefits they need, and, yeah, everyone’s doing what they need to be doing.

Alex (21:09): Good. Okay, great. If somebody is watching this podcast and wants to hire you, how can they contact you?

Chris (21:15): Call anytime. 404-333-8867. My website is khillworkers comp c a h I l l workers comp dot com. Yeah, feel free to reach out anytime. There’s just a couple of us here. I’m the only attorney here, and I think one of the things that really sets me apart from other. Other law firms is that you get to talk to me anytime you want. A lot of these other big firms, the billboard attorneys, they like going out there and bringing in anyone who they can get to sign a contract. You never see an attorney. You get bounced around administrators. You don’t know really what’s going on.

Alex (21:50): Yeah.

Chris (21:51): What I like to offer that’s different is that you’re talking directly to me and got one paralegal, a legal assistant, and just between the three of us, we’re talking about all the cases all the time, and I’m very much directly involved.

Alex (22:06): Awesome. Well, thank you so much for spending your morning with me and filling me in on all of this. I feel like I learned so much, and hopefully the listeners have learned something too. You don’t always have to sue.

Chris (22:19): I think that’s my biggest takeaway. It’s very. It’s low risk going into workers compensation. I get a lot of cases where the insurance company does everything right. I check, I make sure everything’s good. I explain the rights to my client, and everyone ends up happy. It’s the best win for everyone. But picking the right doctor, that’s super important. And if I can emphasize just one thing, it could be reporting the injury, requesting treatment, picking a good doctor, because that doctor, they’re really going to control the claim.

Chris (22:47): They control the treatment, they control what diagnostics you can get, what specialist referrals, how long you’re going to be out of work, what work restrictions you got, and ultimately what the doctors get to say when the case is over, when you reach maximum medical improvement and the insurance company can close their file. So that’s very important. Very, very good to Or. Yeah, very important to choose the right doctor.

Alex (23:08): Okay. Amazing. Well, thank you so much again. I really appreciate you spending your morning with me. And as always, we’ve got your back. And I hope you have a great rest of your day.

Chris (23:17): Yeah, thanks for having me, Alex. Great talking with you.

Alex (23:19): Of course. Bye.

Chris (23:21): Bye. Bye.