Resources

Client Alerts, News Articles, Blog Posts, & Multimedia

Everything you need to know about BMD and the industry.

Employer Liability for COVID-19 Vaccine Side Effects

June 9, 2021

As employers encourage or require employees to obtain a COVID-19 vaccine, they should be aware of OSHA recording obligations and potential workers’ compensation liability.

Though OSHA has yet to revise its COVID-19 guidance in response to the latest CDC recommendations, OSHA has revised its position regarding the recording of injury or illness resulting from the vaccine. Until now, OSHA required an employer to record an adverse reaction when the vaccine was required for employees and the injury or illness otherwise met the recording criteria (work-related, a new case, and meets one or more of the general recording criteria). OSHA has reversed course and announced that it will not require recording adverse reactions until at least May 2022, irrespective of whether the employer requires the vaccine as a condition of employment. In its revised COVID-19 FAQs, OSHA states:

DOL and OSHA, as well as other federal agencies, are working diligently to encourage COVID-19 vaccinations. OSHA does not wish to have any appearance of discouraging workers from receiving COVID-19 vaccination, and also does not wish to disincentivize employers’ vaccination efforts. As a result, OSHA will not enforce 29 CFR 1904’s recording requirements to require any employers to record worker side effects from COVID-19 vaccination through May 2022. We will reevaluate the agency’s position at that time to determine the best course of action moving forward.

This is welcome news and will help facilitate employers’ proactive efforts to protect employees and maintain a safe workplace.

Ohio workers’ compensation law, however, is not so clear. In 1934, the Ohio Supreme Court held in Spicer Mfg. Co. v. Tucker that an employee’s death resulting from a smallpox vaccination was covered under the Workers’ Compensation Act. The decision was based primarily upon the fact that the employer required the employee to obtain the vaccine as a condition of continued employment.

Scant precedent since the Spicer decision includes the 2016 Eighth District Court of Appeals decision in Rolsen v. Walgreen Co. In Rolsen, an employee filed a workers’ compensation claim after experiencing adverse symptoms from a pneumonia vaccine. The court of appeals held that the illness was not sustained in the course of employment since the vaccine was encouraged but not required by the employer. The court of appeals arrived at this conclusion despite the fact that the employee received the vaccine on the employer’s premises during the employee’s working hours.

Ohio Industrial Commission decisions vary and do not provide a great deal of guidance to employers. However, careful implementation of a vaccine policy can substantially mitigate an employer’s workers’ compensation liability for adverse reactions. For assistance in developing such a policy and for the latest OSHA updates, please contact BMD Labor + Employment Member Stephen Matasich at sematasich@bmdllc.com.

Client Alert

Explosive Growth in Pot of Gold Opportunity for Bank (and Other) Cannabis Lenders Driving Erosion of the Barriers

May 13, 2022Our original article on bank lending to the cannabis industry anticipated that the convergence of interest between banks and the cannabis industry would draw more and larger banks to the industry. Banks were awash in liquidity with limited deployment options, while bankable cannabis businesses had rapidly growing needs for more and lower cost credit. Since then, the pot of gold opportunity for banks to lend into the cannabis industry has grown exponentially due to a combination of market constraints on equity causing a dramatic shift to debt and the ever-increasing capital needs of one of the country’s fastest growing industries. At the same time, hurdles to entry of new banks are being systematically cleared as the yellow brick road to the cannabis industry’s access to the financial markets is being paved, brick by brick, by the progressively increasing number and size of banks that are now entering the market.Client Alert

2021 EEOC Charge Statistics: Retaliation & Impact of Remote Work

May 11, 2022The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) released its detailed information on workplace discrimination charges it received in 2021. Unsurprisingly, for the second year in a row, the total number of charges decreased as COVID-19 either shut down workplaces or disconnected employees from each other. In 2021, the agency received a total of approximately 61,000 workplace discrimination charges - the fewest in 25 years by a wide margin. For reference, the agency received over 67,000 charges in 2020, and averaged almost 90,000 charges per year over the previous 10 years.Client Alert

Ohio’s Managed Care Overhaul Delayed – New Implementation Timeline

May 4, 2022At the direction of Governor Mike DeWine, the Ohio Department of Medicaid (ODM) launched the Medicaid Managed Care Procurement process in 2019. ODM’s stated vision for the procurement was to focus on people and not just the business of managed care. This is the first structural change to Ohio’s managed care system since the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' (CMS) approval of Ohio’s Medicaid program in 2005. Initially, all of the new managed care programs were supposed to be implemented starting on July 1, 2022. However, ODM Director Maureen Corcoran recently confirmed that this date will be pushed back for several managed care-related programs.Client Alert

Laboratory Specimen Collection Arrangements with Contract Hospitals - OIG Advisory Opinion 22-09

May 3, 2022On April 28, 2022, the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General (“OIG”) published an Advisory Opinion[1] in which it evaluated a proposed arrangement where a network of clinical laboratories (the “Requestor”) would compensate hospitals (each a “Contract Hospital”) for specimen collection, processing, and handling services (“Collection Services”) for laboratory tests furnished by the Requestor (the “Proposed Arrangement”). The OIG concluded that the Proposed Arrangement would generate prohibited remuneration under the federal Anti-Kickback Statute (“AKS”) if the requisite intent were present. This is due to both the possibility that the proposed per-patient-encounter fee would be used to induce or reward referrals to Requestor and the associated risk of improperly steering patients to Requestor.Client Alert

Property Owner Protection from Tax Valuation Challenges

April 29, 2022New legislation provides significant new protections for commercial property owners against challenges to valuation primarily by local school boards and prohibiting side agreements to avoid tax valuation changes. The Ohio Legislature has approved House Bill 126 which will go into effect July 2022 but will effectively apply to the 2023 tax valuation year.
Older posts