Many regular readers of our North Carolina law blog will recall that the Centers for Disease Control, among others, has said that the risk of contracting Lyme disease is growing in here and in other southern states. The disease is a bacterial infection transmitted by a tick bite. Symptoms can…
Telecommuting is an industry term for “work from home.” Companies began experimenting with telecommuting as the Internet matured and enabled workers to access their work files from home. It was believed that telecommuting would be the future, companies could be composed of people from all over the world who collaborated…
Social Security (or Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance) is the primary social safety net program in the United States. It provides benefits to retirees, people who are disabled and unable to work, and benefits to survivors whose primary breadwinners passed away (survivor benefits to children of deceased parents). The goal of…
Survivors of that late October 2014 day wonder what the trucker was thinking that day. More important, they wonder what was distracting him as he drove his big rig on U.S. 52, about an hour and a half north of Charlotte. Though the truck driver hasn’t said what was distracting…
With the exception of highways, everywhere there are cars you are bound to find pedestrians. In the event of an accident, those on foot can suffer much more severe injuries than those in vehicles. And all too often, pedestrian injuries can become fatal. An average of 13 people a day…
If you get any two people to look at identical situations, you might well get two opinions of what happened and why. It can be difficult to get the exact same descriptions of the exact same situation. That aspect of the human condition is present even when medical experts assess…
Certain kinds of workplace injuries are relatively easy to claim. Injuries caused by machinery or a fall at work often include witnesses and a traumatic event that make your claim to workers’ compensation relatively easy to prove. In cases of acquired injuries or workplace illnesses, it can be harder to…
Automobile accidents happen every day. Unfortunately, too many of them end in fatalities. As you drive by these crashes, you may wonder what circumstances led to this tragedy. Was it a simple driver error? Or was careless or reckless behavior involved? The Auto Insurance Center, a car insurance information site,…
Let’s look some more at the recent report from the North Carolina Department of Labor and its mixed news for workers and workers’ families. Our state’s work-related injury and illness rate continues to drop. In 2015, the injury and illness rate fell to 2.6 per 100 full-time employees. That puts North Carolina…
The North Carolina Department of Labor reports that there were 48 work-related fatalities in the state in 2016. This preliminary data shows an uptick in fatal accidents compared to last year and the highest total since 2011. Falls and struck-by incidents account for the majority of these fatalities, 12 and…