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COURT OF APPEALS CLARIFIES THE METHOD TO ASSIGN PERMANENT PARTIAL DISABILITY AWARDS UNDER THE D C WORKERS’ COMPENSATION ACT Like many other workers’ compensation statutes, the D.C. Workers’ Compensation Act [Act] provides a schedule setting forth the amount of benefits that may be awarded for the permanent disability of certain body members. D.C. Code […]

Jordan Coyne LLP is pleased to announce that Padraic Keane has been advanced to Partner. A member of the Maryland bar since 2002, Padraic was admitted to practice in the District of Columbia in 2006, and Virginia in 2015. He attended the University of Colorado (B.A. 1999), and received his Juris Doctor, cum laude, from […]

James F. Jordan of Chevy Chase, Maryland, passed away peacefully on November 10, 2016. Jim was born on February 9, 1933 in Washington, D.C. He was preceded in death by his parents, John A. Jordan, Sr. and Margaret Ellen Leahan Jordan, his sisters, Mary Margaret Jordan McKeever, Rita Bridgett Jordan Marshall, Joanne Ellen Jordan Barr, […]

In Jones v. The Woodlands, Inc., Jurisdiction Claim No. VA00001035833 (March 29, 2016), the Virginia Workers’ Compensation Commission ruled that an employee injured on the employer’s premises but after he had clocked out was not injured in the course of his employment. The Commission reversed the Deputy Commissioner’s ruling that the injury was compensable. The […]

In G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board, Civil No. 4:15cv54., the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia considered whether a school board resolution requiring that the use of male or female restrooms and locker rooms be restricted to those of the corresponding biological gender constituted impermissible sex discrimination. The Court dismissed a […]

Compensation awarded in an Order must be “paid within 10 days after it becomes due” or a statutorily mandated twenty-percent penalty shall be imposed. D.C. Code § 32-1515. In Daly v. D.C. Dep't of Empl. Servs., 2015 D.C. App. LEXIS 359, 12-13 (D.C. Aug. 6, 2015), the Court held that payment becomes “due” within ten […]

The District of Columbia Workers Compensation Act provides for an automatic assignment of the right to sue a third party to the employer if the person entitled to compensation does not file suit within six months after being awarded compensation in an order. D.C. Code § 32-1535(b). This provision had been applied to bar a worker from […]

Frequently, when a party asserts a cross- or third-party claim, at least one count will assert that the cross- or third-party plaintiff is entitled to indemnification. It is almost boilerplate. However, Maryland law is fairly restrictive on the concept of indemnification, and frequently claims for indemnification are vulnerable to dispositive motions. Maryland recognizes that a […]

The District of Columbia Court of Appeals has reminded the bar again that when an attorney undertakes to act on behalf of another person, no matter what the circumstances, he invokes upon himself the entire structure of the Code of Professional Responsibility. In re Thomas Fortune Fay, No. 14-BG-7 (D.C. March 19, 2015). The Code […]

In Shevlin Smith v. McLaughlin, the Virginia Supreme Court considered the issues of: (1) whether an attorney breaches the duty to a client by failing to correctly anticipate a judicial ruling on an unsettled legal issue; (2) whether collectibility is relevant to a legal malpractice claim when the alleged injury is the loss of an […]