For the past five or six years, I've shared with readers my annual list of bizarre workers' compensation cases for the prior year. In doing so, I reenact, at least in part, a tradition that my mentor, Arthur Larson, and I shared prior to his death some years ago. Each January, Arthur and I would meet in Arthur's home on Learned Place, near Duke University's campus and review our respective lists of unusual or bizarre workers' compensation cases reported during the previous 12 months. Usually our respective lists would overlap a bit, but he'd always have several with truly quirky fact patterns that I had missed.

One thing we always kept in mind: one must always be respectful of the fact that while a case might be bizarre in an academic sense, it was intensely real. The cases mentioned below aren't law school hypotheticals; they affected real lives and real families. And so, to continue in the spirit of that January ritual, here follows my list (in no particular order) of 10 bizarre workers' compensation cases during 2014. I'm gratified that the annual list's popularity has grown over the years. It's even been featured on National Public Radio's Saturday morning show, "Wait, Wait ... Don't Tell Me"...read more.

Federal: No Bad-Faith Denial of Benefits Where Insurer Refused to Pay for Worker's Groceries and Cable TV. The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed an order granting a workers' comp insurer summary judgment in an action originally filed in Iowa state court alleging the insurer had exercised bad faith...read more.

Tennessee: Pain-Management Physicians Exempt From State's "Community" Doctor Rules. Under the recently enacted pain-management provisions, pain-management physicians whose offices are within 175 miles of the injured worker's residence are exempt from the "community" doctor rule...read more.

Florida: Truck Driver Disqualified From Comp Benefits for Misleading Physicians. A Florida appellate court affirmed a decision barring a long-haul truck driver from receiving workers' comp benefits for an alleged work-related injury based on findings that the driver had given false...read more.

Iowa: Annual Profitability Bonus Should Be Included in Injured Worker's AWW Computation. An assistant manager's annual bonus was sufficiently "regular" to be included in his "gross salary, wages, or earnings", and should, therefore, be included in the computation of...read more.