Who or what is the Employees Compensation Appeals Board also know as "ECAB"?
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ECAB is a very small group of four political appointees who quietly meet periodically in a small federal office in Washington DC.
The ECAB panel oversees the injury and death claims of millions of American federal citizens or their families who have been injured or killed on their federal jobs. The ECAB issues decisions on these claims that amount to billions of dollars.
Yet despite overseeing millions of Americans and billions of dollars, the decisions these four political appointees issue at ECAB are not governed or regulated or reviewed by any Court of Law in the United States, not even the US Supreme Court. Nor are the panel member's decisions reviewable by any member of the US Congress, state or government authority.
The decisions of the ECAB members are quite literally "godlike" in their finality.
Increasingly the decisions being issued by the ECAB panel are becoming ever more bizarre in their reasoning and impact on millions of Americans and families. In light of these increasingly bizarre decisions, there is growing need to demand that the ECAB be subject to review of the US Court system to ensure fairness and equity and due process for millions of Americans.
In this claim the widow of a deputy sheriff sought federal compensation benefits as a survivor of her husband who was shot and killed in the line of duty. The deputy sheriff had approached the driver of a car stopped for a traffic violation. Without warning the driver shot the deputy sheriff at close range four times with a 9mm handgun, killing the deputy instantly. The suspect was later arrested and found to be a fleeing felon.
Under federal regulations, police officers who are injured or killed while "apprehending or trying to apprehend an individual who is committing or is wanted for committing a federal crime at the time of the local officer's activity" are entitled to federal compensation benefits. The congressional sponsors of this law were clear that the purpose of this law is to provide compensation benefits for state and local law enforcement officers who "expose themselves to the dangers" of enforcing federal laws or who provide assistance to federal authorities.
Despite the clear mandate of the US Congress to provide the survivors of law enforcement officers compensation benefits when they are injured or killed while exposing themselves to the dangers of their jobs, the ECAB appointees denied all compensation to the widow of this deputy sheriff.
Why? Well ...according to ECAB since the deputy sheriff did not first identify this fleeing felon as a felon before the felon shot and killed him, and since the deputy sheriff further then did not determine whether or not the felon who shot and killed him was indeed a felon, then the deputy could not have known he was shot and killed by a felon and thus benefits were denied.
Incredibly bizarre, while there is no requirement in the federal law for the police officer to "know" a suspect is a federal felon, the ECAB political appointees simply glossed over that detail. The ECAB inserted an additional burden in law that now requires law officers not only to expose themselves to the danger of enforcing federal laws, but also to prove they identified and knew that the suspect was a federal felon before they are entitled to any compensation benefits.
This is quite an astounding burden of proof not required under current federal law but now imposed by the four ECAB appointees on their own. Obviously for all law officers nationwide, law officers now have a huge burden to bear before they can approach any suspect. The officer must first fully identify the suspect and then fully determine that the suspect is a federal felon. Only then can the officer hope that he or she will be compensated should they be injured or killed by the suspect; and then hopefully they can do this before the suspect kills them without warning as above. The obvious result of this is that suspects now have every incentive to shoot first at law officers and in turn officers should only chase or approach unknown suspects at their own risk of losing all compensation benefits.
In this ECAB decision, one must truly wonder what goes through the minds of the ECAB group members.
Here the claimant was to attend a business meeting sponsored by her employer. The claimant was based in Japan and the business meeting was in Atlanta Georgia. After the business meeting the claimant took a personal trip to Seattle. The purpose of her personal trip to Seattle was to visit a friend and to buy a car. After a few days visiting her friend in Seattle she went to the airport there to fly back to Japan. The claimant was injured when she fell from a chair in the Seattle airport.
The claimant did not want federal workers compensation benefits.
The claimant adamantly stated that she was no on the job when she was injured. The claimant insisted that she was and had been on her own personal time when she was injured. The claimant refused to accept federal workers compensation benefits.
The Office of Workers Compensation Programs itself refused to award compensation as per the claimant's insistence, the claimant was not "on the job" when she was injured.
Not so fast said the ECAB. They insisted that despite her claims to the contrary, she was indeed "on the job" in Seattle. The ECAB ruled that the most direct path for the claimant to return to Japan from her business meeting in Atlanta was.... via Seattle. And as result according to ECAB she must be entitled to receive and collect federal workers' compensation benefits for her on the job injury. The ECAB political appointees ordered the claim be sent back to the local federal workers' compensation office for review and award of benefits despite the claimant's request not to be awarded federal workers compensation benefits.
