Court: No blanket exemption for police dashcams
Headline Legal News
The state Supreme Court has ruled that state dashboard cameras can't be withheld from public disclosure unless they relate to pending litigation.
Five of the high court's members said Thursday that the Seattle Police Department wrongly used a state statute as a blanket exemption to the state's public records act when it denied providing dashboard camera videos to a reporter with KOMO-TV. Their ruling overturns a 2012 King County Superior Court judge's ruling that said the department could withhold the videos for three years.
The majority awarded KOMO attorney fees and sent the case back to the lower court.
Four justices argued that the statute was clear that that the recordings should not be released to the public until completion of any criminal or civil litigation.
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Does a car or truck accident count as a work injury?
If an employee is injured in a car crash while on the job, they are eligible to receive workers’ compensation benefits. “On the job” injuries are not limited to accidents and injuries that happen inside the workplace, they may also include injuries suffered away from an employee’s place of work while performing a job-related task, such as making a delivery or traveling to a client meeting.
Regular commutes to and from work don’t usually count. If you get into an accident on your way in on a regular workday, it’s probably not considered a work injury for the purposes of workers’ compensation.
If you drive around as part of your job, an injury on the road or loading/unloading accident is likely a work injury. If you don’t typically drive around for work but are required to drive for the benefit of your employer, that would be a work injury in many cases.
If you are out of town for work, pretty much any driving would count as work related. For traveling employees, any accidents or injuries that happen on a work trip, even while not technically working, can be considered a work injury. The reason is because you wouldn’t be in that town in the first place, had you not been on a work trip.
Workers’ compensation claims for truck drivers, traveling employees and work-related injuries that occur away from the job site can be challenging and complex. At Krol, Bongiorno & Given, we understand that many families depend on the income of an injured worker, and we are proud of our record protecting the injured and disabled. We have handled well over 30,000 claims for injured workers throughout the state of Illinois.