Workers Compensation Defense

 

Experience

For 30 years, we have represented corporations and insurers and employers in workers’ compensation matters in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Workers’ compensation laws are complex and ever-changing. Our workers’ compensation group, is uniquely an all-female team, focusing its practice to provide excellent legal services to the firm’s clients.

Our workers’ compensation defense practice involves:

  • Counsel to our clients’ claims professionals
  • Guidance to employers on policies and strategies to minimize liabilities from injured workers and, where possible, planning how the employee can return to work
  • Complex questions of liability allocation
  • Personal injury defense
  • Trial and settlement strategy
  • Trial hearings
  • Mediation and arbitration
  • Appellate practice at the Workers’ Compensation Court of Appeals and the Minnesota Supreme Court
  • Excess insurance coverage
  • Reimbursement
  • Subrogation
  • Fraud
  • Indemnity
  • Intervention proceedings
  • Coverage B matters
  • Interplay relationship with related civil litigation involving employer liability, contribution
  • Exclusive remedy provisions of the Minnesota Workers’ Compensation Act

We have handled a wide range of matters in Workers’ Compensation, including but not limited to:

  • Asbestos claims
  • Coordination of benefits
  • Coverage disputes
  • Cumulative trauma
  • Employment disputes
  • Jurisdictional issues
  • Medical disputes
  • Multiple injury claims
  • Occupational disease
  • Permanent total disability claims
  • Rehabilitation disputes
  • Repetitive activity injuries
  • Spinal injuries

The firm serves as Portfolio Network Counsel for a group of major property and casualty insurers, handling all workers’ compensation cases in Minnesota.

In addition to defending numerous insurance companies, Brownson PLLC has defended major self-insured employers in Workers’ Compensation matters. In that role, our attorneys have advised, directed strategy, and defended employers against several hundred occupational disease claims over a period of several years.

Attorneys

Nikita E. Luyken

Nikita E. Luyken

     

Aaron J. Knickerbocker

Aaron J. Knickerbocker

     

 

Memberships

  • Minnesota Employers Workers Compensation Alliance
  • Minnesota Hispanic Bar Association, President, 2008-2009; President-Elect, 2007-2008; Treasurer, 2006-2007; Board Member, 2006-2011; Member, 2006-Present
    Caroline M. Terrio
  • Minnesota Defense Lawyers Associations (MDLA)
  • Minnesota Women Lawyers (MWL)
    Sarah D. Shaich Squillace