You keep hearing how terrible the economy is, but apparently that’s not true in North Dakota. A caller to my office was working for an Illinois employer and got sent to North Dakota to perform some work. Apparently everyone is drilling for oil up there. There are so many people working there in fact that the caller and his boss couldn’t find a hotel room. So they ended up driving to Montana to get a room and were involved in a car accident.
The caller reached out to me because the insurance company denied his case saying that he wasn’t working and under North Dakota law it’s not a compensable injury. Now I don’t know what ND law is and I don’t care because this is an Illinois case. He was hired in Illinois for an Illinois based company. That allows him to bring the case in Illinois.
And under Illinois law, because he was a traveling employee, his injuries sustained while traveling are compensable under the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Act. There is no basis for the insurance company to deny this case. But this is what insurance companies do. They save money by trying to discourage people. And they are successful enough that it saves them a decent amount of money.
So the bad news is his case was denied. The good news is that it’s such a bogus denial that once we file the paperwork and make a phone call, the problem should solve itself.
We are workers’ compensation attorneys who help people with Illinois work injuries anywhere in IL via our statewide network of attorneys. Contact us and we will answer your questions or find the right lawyer for your situation.