LOIS Law Firm attorney and Construction Practice Team Partner Tashia Rasul successfully procured a finding from the Board Panel that the Claimant did not timely file his claim and therefore disallowed the claim. After a victory at the trial level, Tashia fashioned a legal argument for the Board Panel that both discredited the Claimant and barred the claim – a trademark technique of hers that she has executed time and again to deliver results for her clients. At trial, the Claimant testified that while he was allegedly en route to purchase work supplies in his own personal vehicle, he was rear-ended. After the alleged accident, he never filed a form regarding the accident, never lost time from work, and the employer had no reason to know whether there was an accident. The employer-witnesses testified that employees were not authorized to retrieve work supplies themselves. Tashia argued successfully that the Claimant was not a credible witness and that because the Claimant failed to file within 30 days of the accident, the claim is prejudicial to the employer and should be barred.
The Claimant appealed this decision to the Board Panel, arguing that the failure to file timely was not prejudicial to the employer. Tashia argued that the Claimant’s testimony was not credible in that he contradicted himself several times and made baseless statements on the stand. The Board Panel, after considering the evidence and the well-developed cross-examination of the witnesses, affirmed the Law Judge’s decision and accepted Tashia’s comprehensive legal argument. The Board Panel rendered the decision that the Claimant was not only incredible but that the claim should be barred under Workers’ Compensation Law due to its untimeliness. This rare combination of trial advocacy and the mastery of written arguments as exemplified by Tashia in this case can only be found at LOIS.
