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Frieze, east facade of Wisconsin State Capitol   Welcome to the website of the Wisconsin Labor and Industry Review Commission.

LIRC is an independent administrative agency which decides appeals in cases involving Unemployment  Insurance (UI),  Worker's Compensation (WC), and  Equal Rights (ER).

Information available at this website includes: 

In Brief - 

ER decisions added 02/01

WC decisions added 1/20

UI decisions added 01/03

Ct. App. decides temporary help case

  

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What's New at LIRC and the LIRC website 

 * December 21, 2011 -- In M.M. Schranz Roofing, Inc & Transportation Ins. Co. v. First Choice Temporary, Metlife Ins. Co., LIRC & Eddie Crews, appeal no 2011AP345 (Wis. Ct. App. December 21, 2011) (recommended for publication), the court affirmed LIRC's decision  finding that Schranz/Tranportation must reimburse First Choice/Metlife for over 3 million dollars in compensation paid after Eddie Crews (now deceased) fell off a ladder while working on a roofing project that Schranz had contracted with Milwaukee Public Schools. Schranz' contract with the school district required that 20 percent of the work be performed by minority subcontractors. The commission found that to help meet this requirement Schranz told Crews to sign up for employment with First Choice (a temporary help agency), and then Schranz arranged for Freeman (a minority individual with a sole proprietorship construction business) to hire Crews, ostensibly for his business. But Schranz had all along intended to have Freeman "loan" Crews back to Schranz for its roofing project. Crews had previously been working directly for Schranz as a roofer. After all this had taken place Crews fell off the roof while performing the work under Schranz' supervision. Schranz had been paying Crews' wages to Freeman, who had been taking a cut out of them before giving the balance to First Choice, who then paid Crews' wages out of the remainder. First Choice thought that Crews was working for Freeman.

Schranz asserted that First Choice acted as a statutory temporary help agency (Wis. Stat. 102.01(2)(f)) when it hired Crews and placed him with Schranz, thus making First Choice the liable employer pursuant to Wis. Stat. 102.04(2m). The court adopted LIRC's rejection of this argument on the basis that Wis. Stat. 102.04(2m) attaches liability only to temporary help agencies that have "placed or leased" the injured employee with the employer with whom the injury occurs. First Choice placed Crews with Freeman not with Schranz. A key fact for LIRC and the court was that First Choice was not a knowledgeable participant in Schranz' plan, and therefore did not "place" Crews with Schranz. The Seaman Body tests (204 Wis. 157) for loaned employees apply to this case, as was held in the Dist. I case decided in 2001. Application of those tests demonstrates that Crews was loaned to Schranz by Freeman, making Schranz the "special employer" of the "loaned employee," Crews. Freeman escapes liability because he had no implied or express employment contract with Crews.

* September 23, 2011 -- The Supreme Court today granted a petition for review in Aurora Consolidated Health Care & Sentry Ins. v. LIRC & Jeffrey Schaefer, 2010 WI App 173, 330 Wis. 2d 804, 794 N.W.2d 520, where the Court of Appeals affirmed LIRC's finding of permanent total disability; affirmed LIRC's interpretation of Wis. Stat. 102.17(1)(g), allowing admission of an independent medical opinion without cross-examination of the independent physician; and affirmed that the denial of cross-examination in this context is not a violation of due process.

 

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This page was last updated February 01, 2012.   

Please direct questions or comments about this website to David B. Nance.