You’ve been injured at work. The insurance doctor says either your injury wasn’t work-related or that you don’t need treatment. Then you see a nondescript man wearing a baseball cap in a nondescript pick up truck in front of your house, at the grocery store, at the gas station. And you think you’re being followed.
You’re not paranoid. You are being followed. And videotaped.
Insurance companies routinely hire local private detectives to follow around injured workers. In the 2012 yellow pages, there were seventeen (17) detective agencies in Anchorage alone. There’s at least a half dozen with websites, easy enough to find on google. All of these people are earning a living following honest, hard working people around.
Guess what? They need the work. And because they need the work, they look for what the insurance companies want to see. They’ll falsify their reports. They’ll edit the videotapes they provide, all in an effort to make it look like the employee isn’t really injured.
The Workers Compensation Board is on to these investigators. In my case, Guinard vs Liberty Mutual/Liberty Northwest, AWCB Decision 13-0017 (2/26/2013), Liberty Mutual introduced a report from an investigator stating my client walked around, not looking injured. I forced the insurance company to produce the video which clearly showed that my client was limping, and the investigator was lying. We won. The insurance company lost.
Keenan Powell has practiced Workers Compensation law in the State of Alaska for over 30 years and has dedicated her practice to Workers Compensation representing injured Alaskans handling hundreds of cases. www.keenanpowell.com.
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