The Career Claimant
Our policy is to help and represent good, honest people with good claims. If we find out that you are lying, we (or any good attorney) would likely drop you. Often defense attorneys will allege that they have good surveillance video on a client. Our policy is to tell them if they have it, show it, and if it says what they allege we'd drop the case. That hasn't happened yet and hopefully never will. We are pretty good at screening potential clients.
One client we won't help is the so called career claimant. This is the worker that files every possible injury they can, no matter how small, and looks at the Illinois workers' compensation system as a Christmas bonus. These bad workers simply hurt the good.
The reality is that every case you file is a public record. If an insurance company sees you file tons of cases, it will cause them to fight your current claim. It will also give an arbitrator a reason to question your credibility. This is especially true if you aren't in a labor job.
We recently got a call from a woman who had filed 15 claims before her 40th birthday, none from heavy work jobs. She now has a serious injury and can't find anyone to take her case. It's kind of like the boy who cried wolf. Now she really needs help and she can't get it.
We have helped many people who have filed multiple claims. All of their injuries were legitimate. But our #1 piece of advice is to just be honest. If you try to game the system it will catch up to you eventually.
