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I am a
Georgia personal injury attorney who handles
car accident,
product liability, and other personal injury cases. The clients in these various types of
cases have different personal injuries and were hurt in different ways,
but they still may have one thing in common: they may have been hurt on
the job. The law gives the employer a right to be paid back (a “subrogation
lien”), and I have been blogging about the exceptions to this lien.
Today I will be discussing the exception for future benefits that the
employer or workers’ compensation carrier has not yet paid.

For readers who are just joining us, in Georgia, when a worker is hurt
on the job, his employer (or the employer’s workers’ compensation
insurance company) has to pay his medical bills and lost wages under our
workers’ compensation system. Under workers’ comp, the employer
pays for every injury that occurs on the job, regardless of who caused
it. The law only requires the employer to pay a very limited amount.

In addition to a worker’s compensation claim, the worker who got
hurt on the job may have a suit against a third party. For example, a
bus driver might get hurt when someone runs into the bus he’s driving.
The bus driver was not at fault for the wreck, and so he has a car accident
claim against the driver who ran into the bus. In the meantime, his employer
is supposed to pay his medical bills and lost wages since the bus driver
was hurt while he was on the job working. When an employee does collect
money from a third party, Georgia law gives the employer a subrogation
lien that will allow it to get back the money it paid on behalf of the
employee, such as medical bills and lost wages.
O.C.G.A. § 34-9-11.1. This statutory ability to force the employee to pay money back is called
a lien. In order to be fair to the employee, Georgia law places several
restrictions on the amount the employee has to pay back.

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Lee’s peers have named her a Georgia SuperLawyer every year for two decades.