Protecting Benefits for Public Safety Employees in the Event of Illness or Injury

Transcript:

Hello. My name’s Mike Dryden. I’m the head of the Workers’ Compensation department at Willig, Williams & Davidson. I have an important message today for Pennsylvania public safety employees regarding their rights after a work injury.

As a public safety employee, firefighter, police officer, or corrections officer, you are entitled to more than just benefits under the Workers’ Compensation Act. You are entitled to benefits under the Pennsylvania Heart and Lung Act, civil service regulations, a pension ordinance, and also the Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Law.

Every day I get a phone call from some type of public safety employee, whether it’s a firefighter, a corrections officer, or a police officer, who is panicked because they’ve just learned that they have an issue with their heart and lung, they have an issue with their pension, they have an issue with their civil service rights, and they don’t have a lawyer who can handle it because they only hired a workers’ compensation attorney.

Most workers’ compensation attorneys in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania are not familiar with the Pennsylvania Heart and Lung Act, are not familiar with the civil service regulations that are applicable to you after an injury or your pension system.

In order to be properly represented, in order to be fully represented, you need to have an attorney who can navigate all of those systems for you and with you after a work injury. At Willig, Williams & Davidson, the lawyers in our workers’ compensation department have decades of experience helping public safety employees handle these issues. I have decades of experience in doing that. We are working with your union to try and make sure that public safety employees get the message, that they understand that if you only have a workers’ compensation attorney after a work injury, you are not fully represented and you and your family are not completely protected.

I hope to help you deal with these issues. You can contact me directly by phone at (215) 656-3645, or by email at mdryden@wwdlaw.com. Be safe. Take care.