Tonight, we honor as a Legend in the field of Workers’ Compensation Capt. Henry Morgan (c.1635-1688) a privateer, plantation owner and Lt. Governor of Jamaica and namesake for a popular brand of spiced rum.
What is overlooked in most biographies of Capt. Morgan is his role in creating a contract with his crew of privateers (pirates) that provided perhaps the first ‘modern’ version of scheduled monetary benefits for losses of limbs, injuries or death of members of his crew. Scholars have found similar schedules going back to biblical times which may have served as a basis for Morgan’s contracts. Morgan’s provisions outlined specific monetary payments (pieces of eight or other currency) based upon the extent of loss suffered in the course of piracy. Such provisions were replicated among other ship captains including Bartholomew Roberts aka ‘Black Bart.’
College Fellow Bob Burke of Oklahoma, last year’s Induction Dinner keynote speaker, in his 2016 Oklahoma City University Law Review article, The Evolution of Workers’ Compensation Law wrote: “Indeed the seventeenth century pirate Captain Morgan reportedly used a compensation schedule for injuries his sailors sustained while engaged in their rather injury-prone occupation. The concept of awarding scheduled benefits in workers’ compensation continues in the twenty-first century.” Social insurance historians generally look at so called modern workers’ compensation programs beginning with the Industrial Revolution in the latter part of the 19th century as having their origins under Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck in Prussia spreading across Europe and into the United States in the early years of the 20th century.
The College of Workers’ Compensation Lawyers is proud to recognize Capt. Morgan, despite his rather controversial role as a plunderer, in recognizing the moral, ethical and legal obligation to adequately compensate those whose labors contribute to the success of any business venture, when the risk of injury or death is inherent in their labors.
PRESIDENT THEODORE ROOSEVELT, JR. (1858-1919)
President Theodore Roosevelt is by all accounts already legendary. What deserves more attention is the prominent role Roosevelt played in the early history of the establishment of workers’ compensation in the United States. At the beginning of the 20th century, a system called “workmen’s compensation”, a novel (yet historically not so novel) system of swift and adequate payment for wage loss and medical benefits was struggling to gain acceptance in the United States. On January 31, 1908, in his Message to Congress, President Roosevelt made an impassioned plea for the necessity of a no-fault-based system of financial and medical benefits for workers injured on the job. The passage of early workmen’s compensation laws spurred a lot of appellate constitutional litigation and argument in the second decade of the 20th century.
Benjamin Marcus was a noted labor lawyer in Detroit and was counsel for the United Auto Workers in matters of health and safety. He also represented the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) as a member of the International Association of Industrial Accident Boards and Commissions (IAIABC) and was chair of the National Lawyers Guild and the American Bar Association’s Committee on Workers’ Compensation.
Mr. Kinnane was instrumental in creating the Michigan workers’ compensation system. His desire to learn and share ideas resulted in the founding of the National Association of Industrial Accident Boards and Commissions, which became the International Association of Industrial Accident Boards and Commissions in 1915. He was instrumental in interpreting the newly adopted workers’ compensation laws and creating a system of administration for their implementation.
In 1910 Crystal Eastman published “Work Accidents and the Law” thereby earning a position with the New York State Commission of Employee’s Liability and Causes of Industrial Accidents. In her position, she drafted the first workman’s [sic] compensation law, which became a model for similar laws across the country. Following her work in New York on the State Commission, she continued to advocate for occupational safety and health for the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations during the Woodrow Wilson administration. A labor lawyer, suffragist, feminist, journalist, and co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union, Crystal Eastman stands tall as a Legend in the field of Worker’s Compensation.
The Hon. Irvin Stander, the memorable Pennsylvania referee (later Judge) and bar association lecturer, began his career in the workers’ compensation field in 1972, when he turned 65. He was to work in the referee job for over 20 years, finally retiring as Judge at age 86. So dedicated to scholarship and excellence in the field was Judge Stander that the Workers’ Compensation Law Section of the state bar association awards its top honor in his name, The Irv Stander Award, presented to the lawyer whose dedication to the administration of workers’ compensation law, clients and professionalism serves as an example to others.
In February 1933, President-elect Franklin Roosevelt asked Frances Perkins to serve in his cabinet as Secretary of Labor. She outlined for him a set of policy priorities she would pursue: a 40-hour work week; a minimum wage; unemployment compensation; workers’ compensation; abolition of child labor; direct federal aid to the states for unemployment relief; Social Security; a revitalized federal employment service; and universal health insurance and made it clear that Roosevelt’s agreement with these priorities was a condition of her joining his cabinet. Roosevelt endorsed them all, and Frances Perkins became the first woman in the nation to serve in a Presidential cabinet.
Samuel Horovitz is best known for founding NACCA, the National Association of Compensation Claimant Attorneys, later to be known as the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (ATLA), and now known as AAJ. The formation of NACCA is described in vivid detail in David vs. Goliath; ATLA and the Fight for Everyday Justice, by Richard S. Jacobson and Jeffery R. White, published by ATLA Press in 2004. In late 1944, Sam had just published Horovitz on Workmen’s Compensation and shined an “unwelcome spotlight” on the thousands of injuries and deaths in workplace.
Professor L. Arthur Larson is recognized as perhaps the nation’s leading scholar in the field of Workers’ Compensation law. In 1952, while a Professor of Law at Cornell Law School, he published the Law of Workmen’s Compensation (Matthew Bender, 1952). His treatise is well known to all practitioners in the field and has been widely cited before Boards, Commissions and the Courts including the US Supreme Court. His son, Lex Larson, a 2015 inductee as a Fellow, has continued with the publication and update of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law.