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A Jefferson County circuit judge today struck down Alabama's Workers' Compensation Act.

Circuit Judge Pat Ballard found two provisions, the $220 a week cap in compensation and the 15 percent cap on attorneys fees, unconstitutional.

However, because one or more provisions were found unconstitutional, the entire act is nullified.

Ballard is staying his order 120 days so the Alabama Legislature can correct it, due to what he called the "magnitude" of the ruling.

Attorney Lawrence King, speaking for the plaintiffs, said Ballard had "turned the lights onto a horrible inequity that has penalized and injured members of Alabama's labor force for decades, and I really am encouraged that his clarion call for change will finally be heard."

The ruling in the case of Nora Clower vs. CVS Caremark, in Jefferson County Circuit Court, came this morning. Clower's attorneys filed suit in November 2013, stating she had injured her back on the job and was entitled to workers' compensation benefits. According to an affidavit filed in February of this year, Clower said she earned an average of about $335 a week for CVS, being employed there for less than a year before her injury.

Under the current law, workers hurt while on the job are eligible for $220 a week in compensation for a disability once their condition has stabilized. Lawyers for the plaintiff argued that that law dated to 1987, and $220 per week was above minimum wage level and the poverty level at that time. However, living costs and wages far exceed that number now. Attorneys argued a similar cap would total just under $500 today.

In his order, Ballard also said the grouping of compensated injured workers into two classes which basically received the same benefit "makes no rational sense."

"There is little credibility in telling two injured workers, both of whom are 99 percent disabled due to work injuries, that they both get $220 per week... when one earns $8.50 per hour for a 40-hour work week, and the other earns an annual salary of $125,000," he wrote.

In fact, $220 a week for a family of four is more than half below the poverty line, Ballard stated.

Don Rhea, another plaintiff attorney, said an injured worker on a six-figure salary had no expectation of adequate assistance with a $220 per week compensation.

"How can I honestly tell them that we have fair laws in Alabama?" he said.

On the question of a 15 percent cap on attorney's fees, Ballard held that it "fails to afford due process of the law." He also ruled that a cap on fees is a function of the judiciary branch and not the legislative.

King said the attorneys had argued that the system, as it existed, was "set up to keep injured workers from getting easy access to legal help." Handing workers' compensation cases were economically unfeasible for some lawyers, leaving up to 20,000 Alabamians each year suffering workplace injuries dependent on the insurance industry for relief, he said.

Ballard stated he understood the far-reaching implications of his ruling.

"There will be impact on medical providers, who presumably draw great income from the provision of medical care billed to workers' compensation insurers, employers, and self-insurance funds," Ballard wrote. "There will be impact to insurers, given that the sales of, and premiums collected for, workers'

compensation insurance in Alabama will halt in the absence of workers' compensation laws...And workers will have to turn to other sources – or none at all – for the provision of medical care or subsistence compensation upon suffering the misfortune of workplace accidents."

Ballard went on to write that "inevitably, this will mean that Alabama's taxpayers will shoulder a large measure of the burden."

"These crises are the direct result of a problem created and allowed to persist by the Legislature," he stated, before issuing a stay.