Loading...
The Connecticut Compensation Act
Beers, George
Beers, George
Abstract
Connecticut is a proverbially conservative State and rarely has been the first to take up innovations. In adopting an act providing compensation for injured workmen, she has had the advantage of the experience of other countries and other American States. More than three decades ago she took the same course in framing a system of reformed procedure and availed herself of the experiments which had gone before. The Workmen's Compensation Act will doubtless require and undergo important amendments before it reaches its final form. As it stands now, it represents some of the best features of the system which have proven themselves practical elsewhere, with changes designed to adapt it to Connecticut needs. The Act went into effect at the beginning of the current year, the commissioners having been appointed three months before and having used the intervening time in determining broad questions of policy, mapping out plans for the administration of the Act and preparing forms, rules and bulletins. The law came as a distinct innovation in Connecticut jurisprudence. It found both the profession and the public unacquainted, not only with its details, but with the underlying conceptions of the system. The work of those concerned in the administration has been naturally, during the earlier months, largely educational in character, consisting in great part in explaining the Act and seeking to place the people of the State in a position to understand its spirit as well as its details.