Samantha Lewis and Liz Phrampus were featured in a recent Insurance Journal article about the impact three Georgia court decisions had on workers' compensation laws. The cases point toward a trend that the laws are becoming more costly to insurers and businesses. 

“It’s a trend that we’ve noticed at all levels of the courts,” said Samantha, a partner who focuses her practice on education law. 

The trend goes back to 2018 and continued through the pandemic when courts, lawmakers, and the public seemed to express new sympathy for some types of workers, Samantha and Liz told the publication. 

The 2018 case was a Georgia Court of Appeals ruling involving a school teacher who had fallen in the classroom, injuring her knee. The ruling was in favor of the teacher's claim that the injury arose from her employment duties.

“That case is what started this roller coaster,” Samantha said.

In another ruling from May 2023, the Georgia Court of Appeals found that an administrative law judge and workers' compensation board were wrong about another injured teachers' claim. That claim involved how prominent a list of names of doctors provided by the insurer/employer was in the workplace. 

The ruling went too far and raises too many questions about what may be considered a prominent posting, Samantha and Liz said.

Click here to read the full article.

Insurance Journal has an audience of more than 100,000 subscribers who are property casualty insurance professionals. 

Liz was also quoted in Law360 recently on the trends in Georgia concerning workers' compensation.