NWCDN Members regularly post articles and summary judgements in workers’ compensations law in your state.
Select a state from the dropdown menu below to scroll through the state specific archives for updates and opinions on various workers’ compensation laws in your state.
Contact information for NWCDN members is also located on the state specific links in the event you have additional questions or your company is seeking a workers’ compensation lawyer in your state.
Readers of The Compendium may recall DWC’s launching two years ago of CompCourses. These free webinars are designed to benefit workers’ compensation professionals, including adjusters, employers, and healthcare staff, by providing essential education on the workers’ compensation system, delivered in free 1-hour webinars. Not only are participants able to stay informed on current trends and improve their professional skills, they are also able to earn free Continuing Education (CE) credits by watching the webinars and completing a short quiz.
DWC announced last month that its CompCourses webinars will now be available in an on-demand, self-study format, allowing participants to learn and earn CE credit whenever it fits their schedule by watching previously recorded CompCourses webinars and completing the short quiz to earn 1 hour of TDI self-study CE credit.
Earning on-demand credit could not be easier! Simply visit the CompCourses webpage here and select the course you wish to take. You will fill out a Microsoft form, watch the 1-hour webinar on YouTube, and take the quiz to test your knowledge.
Voila…..
DWC has announced that it will continue to offer live CompCourses in 2026, affording participants the opportunity to engage directly with subject-matter experts and earn CE credit.
CompCourses webinars for 2026 are planned as follows:
Copyright 2026, Stone Loughlin & Swanson, LLP
DWC is considering amending 28 Texas Administrative Code Chapter 152 concerning attorney fees and sought comments through last month on whether changes to the current hourly rate for attorney fees are necessary.
We note that when the Act was implemented in 1991, the approved hourly rate for attorney fees was $150. That rate remained in place for 26 years, until 2017, when it was increased to $200.
Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index Inflation Calculator, $200 in January, 2017, has the same buying power as $266.89 in December, 2025. Further, $200 in December, 2025, has the same buying power as did $149.88 in January, 2017. In other words, due to inflation, it’s as if the rate was never increased.
By comparison, the maximum weekly temporary income benefit in 1991 was $428, and the minimum was $64. By 2016, the maximum weekly benefit had risen to $895, and the minimum to $134. Today, the maximum weekly benefit is $1,271, and the minimum is $191. So, benefit levels have nearly tripled since 1991, while the attorney hourly rate has increased only once and remains at $200 nearly a decade later. Meanwhile, that rate must cover the overhead required to operate and maintain an effective law practice which has increased in ways that were inconceivable in 1991.
Workers’ compensation now has the second lowest average hourly rate of any practice area at an average of $180, second only to juvenile law at $146, while the average hourly rate for all practice areas is $367. Hourly Rates in Texas.
The overarching concern is that if the rate cap is not raised, the workers’ compensation bar will continue to shrink, as it is doing now, as older, experienced attorneys retire and new attorneys choose other practice areas over workers’ compensation law because it is more difficult to make the numbers work. At that point, employees, employers, and carriers will no longer be able to obtain effective legal representation in this highly complex area of the law.
Copyright 2026, Stone Loughlin & Swanson, LLP
Death investigation professionals aka last responders must have a powerful
lobby. DWC adopted rule amendments that take effect January 29, 2026 to
implement Texas Labor Code Section 504.057 which requires expedited medical
benefits and accelerated medical dispute resolution for claims for medical
benefits by a “death investigation professional” who sustains a serious bodily
injury in the course and scope of employment, and requires that the death
investigation professional inform DWC and the independent review organization
that a contested case hearing or appeal involves a death investigation
professional.
When the legislature enacts laws that provide preferential treatment for such a
narrowly defined class of injured workers, it can cause more problems than it
solves with increased regulatory complexity, among other things. We
recommend doing a study in a year or two to see how many times these new “last
responder” rules are invoked. Let us know your prediction!
Copyright 2026, Stone Loughlin & Swanson, LLP
DWC announced that its 2026
initiatives include online medical fee dispute submissions, remote interpreters
for CCHs, a pilot program to explore the use of AI-based interpretation tools,
and use of AI for a customer service knowledge base.
If you haven’t spotted the trend yet, the watchword here is “AI,” the use of
which is gradually encroaching on the practice of law, as it is in so many
other fields. For all AI’s benefits, there is reason to worry about his
increasing presence.
AI has the capacity to invent facts and create information that does not exist
to support its response and/or to appease the perceived bias of the user. One
well-known example is of a lawyer who sued Colombian airline Avianca several
years ago, alleging that a food and beverage cart injured his client’s knee
while he was onboard a flight. The lawyer submitted a brief using ChatGPT to do
his legal research, but the AI tool invented case law entitled Martinez v Delta
Air Lines, Zicherman v Korean Air Lines, and Varghese v China Southern
Airlines. When Avianca’s attorneys informed the judge that they could not
locate the cases cited, the plaintiff’s lawyer had to ‘fess up and admit he had
used ChatGPT. He said he asked ChatGPT to cite its sources and AI responded
that the cases could be located in the Westlaw and LexisNexis databases. The
judge ultimately sanctioned the lawyer and his law firm.
Likewise, our firm has received communications from opposing attorneys who have
relied extensively on AI programs to generate their correspondence, a great
deal of which proved to be incorrect. Citations to the Texas Labor Code
and Texas Administrative Code are often out-of-date, or otherwise
non-existent. Case law and Appeals Panel Decisions have similarly been
misinterpreted and misquoted. It has been our experience that checking
and correcting AI-generated documents often offsets the supposed time saved in
relying on it in the first place.
AI as a tool for collating data remains in its infancy, and as with any infant,
it requires constant supervision. While there are benefits to its use,
there are substantial risks, too, and for that reason it is the policy of this
firm not to rely on it in any capacity.
Copyright 2026, Stone Loughlin & Swanson, LLP
At the DWC Quarterly Stakeholder Meeting held on January 21,
2026, the DWC reported on their 2025 accomplishments and their plans for 2026.
Online Tools
New online tools introduced by the DWC over the last year include:
Copyright 2026, Stone Loughlin & Swanson, LLP
Commissioner of Insurance Cassie Brown retired after more than
four years overseeing the Texas Department of Insurance. Governor Greg Abbott
appointed Amanda Crawford in her stead to oversee the department, for a term
set to expire on 2/1/27. Ms. Crawford was serving as the executive director of
the Department of Information Resources and is Texas’ chief information
officer. It remains to be seen if and how the change in leadership at TDI will
impact DWC since it is technically a division within the Department of
Insurance.
In ALJ news, Barham Richard has joined the DWC as a traveling Administrative
Law Judge based out of Austin. Mr. Richard has an extensive background serving
as legal counsel for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Lone Star
Legal Aid, and the Texas Office of Public Utility Counsel. He most recently
served as a Senior Staff Attorney for the Texas Medical Board. We are glad to
have him join us in the wonderful world of workers’ compensation!
Congratulations are also in order to Christina Figueroa, Sarah Hart, and Avery
Fortenberry, all of whom have been recently promoted from PROs to BROs. We look
forward to working with them all during our Benefit Review Conferences.
Change is also afoot in Lubbock, where the DWC is searching for a new home for
its offices and seems set on giving up its lovely quarters at 22 Briercroft
Office Park. For those who have never made the attempt, trying to locate
the Lubbock Field Office for the first time is something of a right-of-passage
hazing ritual among system participants, obscured as it is behind trees and
secreted away along the side of the building. Hopefully the new location
is a bit more conspicuous!
Copyright 2026, Stone Loughlin & Swanson, LLP
Workers’ compensation
insurers just secured a major victory in the Texas air ambulance
litigation. On January 16, 2026, the State Office of Administrative
Hearings (SOAH) issued decisions in the two major groups of air ambulance cases
pending at SOAH.
In both cases, the Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) found that for the years in
issue from 2011 – 2013, fair and reasonable reimbursement for the base rate
ranges from 128.8% to 139.3% of Medicare and the mileage rate ranges from
119.1% to 128.8%. The ALJs rejected the air ambulance providers’ proposed
reimbursement that ranged up to more than 500% of Medicare for the average
total rate. SOAH previously rejected the air ambulance providers’ argument that
the federal Airline Deregulation Act (ADA) preempts the “fair and reasonable”
reimbursement standard and therefore, they should be paid their full billed
charges.
The decisions issued by SOAH in these cases are notable for the depth of their
analysis, each over a hundred pages, which followed a four-day hearing in the
first case and a three-day hearing in the second case, both with numerous
expert and fact witnesses. Texas Mutual, which has around a 40% market
share, should be commended for doing the heavy lifting in these cases.
The air ambulance providers, which are private equity-owned, will likely appeal
these latest SOAH decisions in their ongoing effort to extract more money from
the Texas workers’ compensation system.
As of December 2025, there are 2,183
air ambulance disputes at DWC, dating back to at least 2014, and this number
will continue to rise as the air ambulance providers file new disputes.
Copyright 2026, Stone Loughlin & Swanson, LLP
