Employers in the Mountain State need to know that West Virginia (WV) law prohibits discrimination against employees who use tobacco products while not at work. Commonly known as a “smoker protection law,” the WV tobacco use discrimination law places significant restrictions on actions employers may take due to off-duty tobacco use.

A common question our workers compensation unit receives relates to the payment of workers' compensation claimant attorney fees by claims administrators. With the media reporting daily about excessive attorney fee awards in other areas, concern over this issue is understandable. However, in the context of West Virginia (WV) workers' compensation, the claims administrator rarely has to pay a claimant's attorney fees.

With the convenience of the Internet, a lot of West Virginians try to save money or try new things through “do-it-yourself (DIY)” research. You can find DIY car repair, DIY arts and crafts projects, DIY home repairs, and nearly every other topic imaginable. But when it comes to estate planning, it usually best to leave that job to a will attorney in WV.

Every project comes with inherent risk. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you could make any number of errors that could result in a poorly completed project, or worse, a complete project fail. And when a project fails, you’ll likely have to pay a professional more to fix it that it would have cost to have paid for it in the first place.

The West Virginia (WV) Legislature has encouraged healthcare providers to donate their time and talents to care for indigent patients, including creating special licenses that aid qualified professionals in volunteering at free clinics, as well as providing civil immunity for that free care.  See e.g. W. Va. Code § 30-3-10a. Donated healthcare in WV works because it allows licensed professionals to donate their time caring for the poor in a clinical setting.

Employers have this funny quirk: They like to know the identities of their employees and get a bit testy when told they are wrong (it’s something to do with payroll, taxes and unions). That is why employers reacted negatively when the NLRB issued the Browning-Ferris Industries of California opinion in 2015 and created a new test for determining joint employment.