Providing Objective Medical Evidence to Get Workers’ Compensation In New Jersey

If you have sustained a workplace injury, you may be entitled to workers’ compensation under New Jersey’s workers’ comp laws. But getting benefits is not an easy process. One of the most difficult conditions that must be met in order to get benefits is for you or your New Jersey workers’ comp lawyer to provide objective medical evidence showing that the work conditions were the material cause of your workplace injury.

The Rigorous Standard of Objective Medical Evidence

Under New Jersey’s workers’ compensation laws, a doctor must be able to verify that there is objective medical evidence showing that an injury or disease exists and that work exposure was the major cause.

Court cases have established a rigorous standard with respect to the amount of objective medical evidence required to sustain a workers’ comp claim.  Perhaps the most stringent standard is set by Laffey v. City of Jersey City, where benefits were rejected based on a lack of quantitative evidence and scientific studies linking the workplace injury or disease to work conditions the claimant was subjected to.

However, other cases distinguish Laffey on the issue of objective medical evidence. For example, in Magaw v. Middletown Board of Education, the judge provided that although there was no object medical evidence directly linking second-hand smoke to the claimant’s tonsil cancer, a medical study linking other types of cancer to second-hand smoke combined with other evidence that tobacco is a major risk factor in developing tonsil cancer and that since claimant was pervasively exposed to second-hand smoke for 26 years created a logical inference that the injury was work related.

The different, yet rigorous, standards of proving objective medical evidence make it imperative that you hire a New Jersey workers’ comp lawyer to help you successfully get the workers’ compensation benefits to which you are entitled.

Contact Us

For more information about meeting the rigorous standard of providing objective medical evidence to obtain worker’s compensation benefits, call New Jersey workers’ comp lawyer Dan Matrafajlo at (908) 248-4404.