Workers’ Compensation Defense
Workers’ compensation defense for disputed Illinois files.
Maimonis Law defends employers, carriers, TPAs, self-insured organizations, and public employers before the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission — at arbitration, on review, and through judicial review — and advises on the credit, settlement, and recovery questions that decide what a file actually costs.
What the firm handles
Contested accident and causation, including repetitive-trauma allegations. Medical exposure, treatment disputes, and Section 12 examinations. Temporary total disability, maximum medical improvement, and overpayment credits. Permanency, wage differential, and permanent total disability, including odd-lot claims. Section 19(b) and 19(h) proceedings. Commission review and preservation for appeal. Settlement posture and file closure. Subrogation and Section 5(b) lien recovery — including intervening in the employee’s third-party action to protect and collect the lien. Third-party liability defense — defending employers brought into the injured worker’s suit on contribution claims — with the lien and the waiver pressure handled together.
How the record gets built
The first question is what changes value: the mechanism of injury, the medical history, the job duties, the witness, the deadline, the lien, the forum, or the authority. The file is organized around that issue rather than around every document that exists.
Medical opinions are only as reliable as the facts beneath them. The firm builds the chronology and the medical record together — what history the physician received, what exposure was assumed, whether the timing fits, whether alternative causes were considered — and prepares the Section 12 examiner with verified job duties, work logs, and the questions that actually matter, so the expert deposition tests the foundation and not just the conclusion.
High-exposure disability claims are proved or defeated on the vocational record: restrictions tied to the litigated injury, transferable skills, labor-market evidence, and a job search that either happened or did not. Section 19(h) petitions turn on a comparison — the disability at the original award against the condition alleged now — not on the fact of a later surgery.
At arbitration the decisions are made in real time: examination, objections, foundation, impeachment, order of proof. Review is not a new trial; the brief has to use the record precisely. When later review is handled by other counsel, the quality of the record below is what remains.
From the record
Larry Pope v. City of Chicago — accident and causation not proved; denial sustained on judicial review. Leola Harrell v. City of Chicago — $114,141.20 credit obtained at arbitration. Donna Halters v. City of Chicago — four Section 19(h) petitions and a PTD claim briefed for the City. Reynaldo Delgado v. Daniel Schiavone — $42,573.63 of a $60,000 third-party settlement recovered on the Section 5(b) lien after refusing a recommended waiver. Full descriptions on the Representative Work page.
Section 5(b), subrogation, and third-party actions
When compensation payments and a third-party action overlap, lien rights, waiver pressure, allocation, and future credit have to be addressed before value is lost. The firm calculates the lien, evaluates whether to monitor, intervene, or pursue recovery directly, and reviews proposed settlements for the numbers, the waiver language, and the future-credit treatment. When the employer itself is brought into the third-party case on a contribution claim, the firm defends the employer in the circuit court and keeps the lien recovery in view — in one matter recovering $42,000 under Section 5(b) at the settlement hearing after the plaintiff had demanded a full waiver of the lien.
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