At first, the workers’ compensation case in which associate attorney Fotini Karamouzis defended a holding company and its multinational insurance carrier didn’t seem especially complicated. 

As Fotini saw it, the claimant–a 64-year-old carpenter who had tripped over a pipe while using a drill hammer, injuring his back, neck, shoulders, and elbows—had filed his January 2018 claim against the wrong business; it was while working as a carpenter for his employer’s construction company, not as a janitor at that employer’s holding company, that he had been injured, and Fotini had an employer witness to testify to that. 

But then the witness became highly uncooperative and the case suddenly turned difficult. Lacking a single witness to testify that the carpenter had targeted the wrong employer with his claim, which sought recompense for medical expenses and indemnity benefits, Fotini–a member of our Workers’ Compensation Practice Group–had to adjust her strategy. It worked. 

Introducing information gleaned from the company’s website and using the claimant’s own testimony and claim form against him, she won at trial on October 29, 2018, successfully defending our client from a liability risk upward of $100,000.