Worked to Death

How victims are shut out of the workers’ comp system by big bills, bad laws, and companies that will do anything but pay.

By Jamie Smith Hopkins

LANCASTER, Pennsylvania—Finding the first bit of evidence that Gene Cooper’s job damaged his brain and destroyed his health was the easy part. That only took his wife four years, eight doctors, and at least a dozen tests.

The hard part: getting his former employer to pay.

Eight years have passed since Sandra Cooper filed a workers’ compensation claim on her husband’s behalf. She prevailed after 4½ years of wrangling, when a judge agreed that chemical exposure on the job at a flooring factory was the reason Gene Cooper—a bright father of two with a quirky sense of humor—had transformed into a nursing-home patient who couldn’t speak and sometimes stared into space when his family visited. That was 2012. Sandra Cooper is still trying to get medical bills and lost wages covered today, nearly two years after he died.