What is Serious and Willful misconduct?
A. This is a remedy for a very limited category of California work injury cases. Workers comp is a no-fault law, and you can not sue for negligence. If the employer is just negligent, you do dot have a serious and willful claim. But if the employer is more than negligent, you may have a serious and willful claim. These claims are usually found in situations where the employer violates serious OSHA safety orders, where the employer tells the employee to complete a task excessively and clearly dangerous and is outside the usual scope of work, where the employers request is close to intending the worker get hurt, etc. Each case of this nature must be analyzed on its own facts. If an employer if found guilty of serious and willful misconduct, the employee will receive a 50% boost in benefits s/he would have otherwise received.
