I wanted share with you a rather interesting mediation I attend last week. I don't want to use the site to talk about specific claims but this was an interesting claim. The client had an employee who had a back injury that required surgery. This was a good employee who had worked for this company for about 5 years. When the employee was released to come back in a transitional capacity, the employer not only accommodated his physical restrictions he actually brought him back in the office and was teaching him how to estimate jobs. This new job skill would result in a 25% increase in his preinjury rate. Well a couple weeks later at a family BBQ he is told he needs an attorney and he retains one. So we now have mediation and the settlement demand is North of 200,000. During the mediation the employee was asked does the company run a safe operation and the answer was yes. Next the employee was asked does the employer and namely the employee show care and concern for his employee’s and the answer was a resounding yes. So I wondered (probably out loud) why the employee ever retained an attorney. ...