Statutes & Regulations
Workers' Compensation Statutes
Connecticut's Workers' Compensation Act, or Chapter 568 of the Connecticut General Statutes, is the body of law that specifically addresses issues of workplace injury and disease, benefits for which injured or ill employees may be eligible, insurance requirements to provide for benefits, how benefits are best to be provided to eligible employees, how disputes between various parties are handled, and the rights and responsibilities of all parties within the state's workers' compensation system.
Workers' Compensation Regulations
While statutes prescribe what the workers' compensation system does, how benefits are provided to injured workers, and what administrative work must occur to run the system, often it is an administrative regulation that specifies the details participants in the system must follow. While regulations are not statutes, they do carry the force of law, second only to the statutes themselves.
Approximately 70 sections of the Connecticut General Statutes pertain to certain types of workers or affect certain types of injuries, even though these statutes lie outside of the Workers' Compensation Act itself. Since such statutes play an important and integral part in the administration of the state's workers' compensation system, they are included here for reference.
Workers' compensation case law is created by decisions rendered in appeals. A party in a claim, and sometimes both parties, may appeal the decision of one of the Commission's Administrative Law Judges from a lower-level hearing. Most appeals are heard by the Commission's Compensation Review Board, or CRB, but in very rare instances, a case may be appealed all the way to the State Appellate Court or even to the Connecticut Supreme Court.
When a panel of Administrative Law Judges adjudicating disputes brought before the CRB or Judges in the state's Judicial Branch serving on the courts hear workers' compensation cases, they apply existing laws and regulations to the specific facts of those cases. The decisions they render carry the force of law, hence the term "case law."