Nebraska Workers’ Compensation Court Releases the 75th Annual Report

Recently, the Nebraska Workers’ Compensation Court released its 75th Annual Report for the fiscal year of 2017. In this it provided updates regarding general filing statistics. The complete report can be found at https://www.wcc.ne.gov/publications/annualreport_fy2017.pdf. This report covers the fiscal year from July 1, 2016 through June 30, 2017. The report discusses the adoption of court rules, recent legislation and appropriation dollars allocated by the legislature. Further, the report discusses second injury and vocational rehabilitation expenditures made by the state, the state’s costs were down approximately 10% in 2017 from 2016. This appears to have been part of an ongoing trend beginning in 2011.

In terms of reported injuries, the number of reported injuries were down to 37,391 reported work injuries from 39,796 reported work injuries in 2016. Comparing 2017 to 2007, the number of reported work injuries is down by approximately 10,000 injuries.

Work related fatalities totaled 41 deaths in 2017. This is slightly up from 2016 but down by 13 fatalities from 2015.

Regarding Petitions filed, Petitions filed are down by approximately 50. There were 1,053 Petitions filed in 2017 compared to 1,100 Petitions filed in 2016.

For questions regarding current trends under Nebraska workers’ compensation law, please don’t hesitate to contact attorney Paul Barta at PBarta@baylorevnen.com.