This video discusses an extremely difficult subject that may be very hard for some viewers to hear and it therefore comes with a trigger warning. If you’ve experienced workplace violence and are suffering from PTSD or other psychiatric disorders, particularly the 2022 Wal-Mart Shootings Chesapeake or the May 31, 2019 Building Two shootings at the Municipal Center in Virginia Beach, you may want to have someone else watch this video for you and convey the information to you. Workers Compensation Attorney Joe Miller here discusses the issue of workplace violence, specifically in the context of these horrific recent tragedies from which many families and individuals, including some of our current clients, continue to suffer. He also discusses the lawsuits that have been brought by some employees against Wal-Mart to illustrate the available options if you are an employee and subjected a workplace violence situation. The answers are not easy to hear, and may surprise you. The bottom line is that in Mr. Miller’s humble opinion, the laws need to change. This is because any attorney that knows anything about the law in Virginia knows the Wal-Mart victims technically have no legal basis for recovery in personal injury lawsuit in a Court of Law. Hopefully, Wal-Mart will do the right thing. But there is no guarantee they will. And if that happens, and those cases are kicked out of Court, the only other option for those employees or their families is to file for workers compensation. But , the sad fact that many people do not realize is that just because you are injured at work DOES NOT mean you have a workers compensation claim. There can be potential defenses to those claims as well. Will they exist in the Wal-Mart case? It’s too early to say. Let’s hope and pray the facts point to compensable claims for all or that Wal-Mart does the right thing and accepts all workers compensation claims as compensable, just as Virginia Beach did back in 2019.
