A new case was decided on Friday at the Illinois Supreme Court. For those who are interested you can read the whole thing here: Interstate Scaffolding v. The Workers’ Compensation Commission .
The gist of the case is that the law used to be that if you were hurt on the job, but working with restrictions, if you got fired for "cause" then you didn’t collect workers’ compensation benefits. Cause would be skipping work, showing up drunk, punching your boss, etc. On the other hand if you were fired for bogus reasons then they’d still have to pay you.
The Illinois Supreme Court changed all that. The law as it now stands says that if you are fired for cause, but have a work related injury that has not stabilized then you are entitled to TTD benefits until your condition does stabilize.
And while we are not encouraging you to do this, theoretically you could return to work on light duty, smack your boss in the face or drop your pants or get high while working and after they fired you, you’d get paid workers’ compensation benefits until your condition stabilized.
This is a huge decision and if you had a crystal ball you can bet that you will see at some point a law will be introduced to overturn this decision.
