NY State Workers Comp Board Sucks, Says Times

The NY Times has a lengthy front page article about the New York State Workers’ Compensation Board based on "18 months attending hearings, reviewing cases and interviewing participants" at the Queens office. Workers from different industries (a construction worker who has fallen from scaffolding, a retail clothing store worked injured while carrying items) "come to the board seeking authorization for medical treatment and replacement wages — in short, a quick and fair resolution from a system set up to replace fractious court fights between employers and employees" but instead find "a subbasement of the legal world, a $5.5 billion-a-year state-run bureaucracy" with "lawyers chatt[ing] on cellphones, crack[ing] bawdy jokes or read[ing] newspapers during testimony" and "expert witnesses... biased to the point of caricature." A lawyer for insurance companies tells the Times, “Comparing Supreme Court, say, to this is like comparing a hospital to a MASH unit. A lot of it is meatball justice.”