Faculty News

Worker’s compensation book
garners rave reviews from colleagues

More than 1 million people in Mississippi work in jobs that are covered by workers’ compensation—the form of insurance that may provide remuneration for employees injured in the course of employment—and at least 13,000 of those workers suffer a work injury or death each year.

“Unfortunately work injuries are a fact of life, as is the resulting strain felt by workers and their families,” said law professor John Bradley, co-author of Mississippi Workers’ Compensation (Thompson/West, 2006).

“Compensation for employment injuries takes place partly in this special statutory system we call workers’ compensation,” he said. “But workers’ compensation overlaps with other branches of law, creating an intricate and ever-changing legal fabric.”

Bradley says his extensive research on the subject and the resulting 632-page book grew out of his wanting to explain the many workinjury problems that people encounter in the legal system.

“The [workers’ compensation] payments are designed to relieve economic distress on injured workers and their families, and to restore the worker to wage-earning ability,” Bradley said. “The system is important to fill very real needs, to do so quickly and efficiently, to encourage employment safety and, finally, to resolve the many disputes that arise about work injuries.”

Co-written with Linda Thompson, an administrative judge at the Mississippi Workers’ Compensation Commission, the book is getting glowing reviews from some of the state’s top workers’ compensation lawyers.

In a book review written for the Mississippi Law Journal, John G. Jones, one of the state’s premier workers’ compensation attorneys, deems Bradley’s book “a superior volume” and refers to Bradley as “the most prolific and respected author on the [Workers’ Compensation] Act and its judicial construction over the past generation.”

“Offerings of this sort are rare,” Jones writes. “Every practitioner, whether (he or) she specializes in compensation law or merely runs into compensation-related issues once every five years, should own ‘Mississippi Workers’ Compensation.’ Nothing else is necessary. More importantly, nothing else will do.”

UM law Dean Samuel M. Davis said Bradley is clearly recognized as the authority in the field of workers’ compensation.

“His book will prove to be an indispensable resource for lawyers and judges,” Davis said. “As dean, I am pleased that he has joined others on our faculty who have shared their expertise in the form of books in such diverse fields as wills and estates and family law.”

Bradley’s contract with his publisher calls for him to submit annual supplements to the book to enlarge the coverage of the treatise and to keep it up to date.

—Jennifer Farish

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