Today we take workers compensation
laws for granted, but the
protection they afford to
employers and employees alike was
unheard of in the old common law
rules they replaced. The biggest
improvement centered around how the
new laws handled responsibility for
injury. It used to be that an injured
worker could not collect medical costs
or lost wages until he or she could
prove that the injury would not have
happened "but for" the employer's negligence.
Workers comp laws changed all
that. Today, employees are entitled to
medical costs and partial lost wages any
time they are injured on the job, not
just when someone can be proved to
have done something wrong.
Obviously, this was a great benefit