Virginia lawmakers vote down bill aimed at protecting workers suffering serious brain injury

Claire Pierce is worried that her husband’s unexpected death as the result of a serious brain injury was in vain.  Her husband Arthur Pierce’s tragic death only 16 months after he was found injured next to his tractor trailer highlights an inadequacy of the current Virginia workers’ compensation laws.

Unfortunately, because Mr. Pierce’s head injuries were so severe, he was unable to tell anyone how he was injured.  Without his testimony or the testimony of any witnesses, his family was unable to prove that he was injured as a result of his job and their workers’ compensation claim was denied.

What is frustrating to Mrs. Pierce and her family is that there is already a law in Virginia that allows families of victims found dead during the course of their employment to collect workers’ compensation benefits.  The presumption in these fatality cases is that without any evidence to the contrary, the worker’s death can be attributed to their job and therefore compensation is warranted.  Mrs. Pierce and sympathetic lawmakers were hoping to extend a similar protection to workers injured so seriously that they are unable to explain what happened to them.

Sadly, no such protection will be extended for workers suffering form severe brain injuries.  Mrs. Pierce, in remarks prepared for a Virginia Senate committee neatly sums up her unfortunate situation: “If my husband had died at the scene of his workplace accident, we would have been paid benefits, but because he fought for life for 16 months, the taxpayers, my employer, our health insurance carrier and I are bearing the full financial weight of this tragedy… the more severely injured a person is, the better the chance that the claim will be denied.”

Tragic words for an unimaginably tragic situation.