How can my lawyer help with an appeal?
Answer
So, appeals in the workers compensation context typically look like this: if, uh, you hired a lawyer or you attempted to bring a petition on your own to recognize your injuries, and the judge at the pretrial hearing decided that, for whatever reason, uh, they weren’t prepared to grant your petition, uh, then and there, but rather they need to hear more evidence—they need a full hearing with testimony and witnesses and the like—then that, in itself, is a form of an appeal that we typically see in workers compensation. Um, your claim is denied at the pretrial level, and by claiming a trial—claim for trial is another word for, uh, another word for appeal—you get to a level of the, um, review process by the court where, like a trial, uh, a full trial, you can depose doctors, you can call witnesses, you can have testimony under oath, and the judge receives and hears and considers all of the evidence and then makes a final, um, determination about whether or not your claim is compensable or not. Now, if it’s not, you still have appellate rights beyond, um, the hearing judge or the, or the trial judge, to the Appellate Division of the Workers Compensation Court or potentially even the Supreme Court. But typically, an appeal, um, indicates that a judge either needs to hear more robust forms of evidence or that perhaps there’s some problem with the, with the claim legally, uh, or evidentiary, uh, that requires an appeal, and, you know, it’s a very difficult thing to handle on your own. That’s a—that’s something a lawyer would almost always have to be involved in.