Updates on Holnam and Sigala cases

Back on Dec 28, 2006 I commented on two cases decided at the Colorado Court of Appeals. The first was Sigala and involved a decision that if your temporary benefits are suspended for not making a doctors appointment sent to you by certified mail (by special rule) that suspended means terminated even if later you do see the doctor. So if you were foolish and missed a specially arranged medical appointment and later make it up you still lost some of your temporary benefits. This issue has been granted review today by the Colorado Supreme Court. The court wants to hear from each side on what the word "suspension" is supposed to mean. The second case, Holnam involved trying to have two hearings on compensability using two different theories to obtain coverage for a claimant (one theory was accident and the second was occupational disease). On Holnam further review was denied by the Supreme Court and the claimant lost his case to show it was an on the job injury. As is clear from these two examples caselaw in workers compensation matters is happening on a regular basis. Nothing simple about this field as often the arguments pertain to highly technical matters.

By the way as always my comments are simply my opinions and for simplicity sake I do tend to abbreviate the details. Otherwise you'd have boring and long winded materials on this blog. For the most accurate details you can read the actual case, statute or rule or review further with your attorney.