Court: Ex-federal immigration lawyer can be sued for forgery
Legal Issues
A U.S. appeals court says a former federal immigration lawyer who forged a document in an effort to get a man deported can be sued for damages.
Jonathan M. Love was assistant chief counsel for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Seattle in 2009, when he forged a document purporting to show that Mexican immigrant Ignacio Lanuza had voluntarily agreed to be deported in 2000.
Lanuza later obtained a new attorney, who noticed the document was fake: Its letterhead said "U.S. Department of Homeland Security" — a federal agency that didn't exist in 2000.
Love was criminally prosecuted and sentenced to a month in prison in 2016. But U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman reluctantly dismissed Lanuza's civil claim against him. The judge said legal precedent barred the lawsuit.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision Tuesday. The panel called the forgery egregious.
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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.