The plaintiff in this case, Dr.  Brenda Steinnagel has brought this lawsuit against 

Workplace Health & Cost Solutions (WHCS) and the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB). WHCS had a contract with WSIB to provide external medical opinions on injured workers. Dr. Steinnagel alleges “wrongful dismissal and breach of contract as against WHCS, she also alleges economic torts, conspiracy and fraudulent conduct as against both defendants and claims damages from them. In essence, she claims that the defendants orchestrated the termination of her contract for an unlawful purpose in furtherance of their pattern of conduct of pressuring physicians to alter their medical opinions in order to deny claimants’ benefits.” (Steinnagel v Workplace Health, 2016 ONSC 2138 (CanLII), 2015)
This case is only at the pleadings stage. Pursuant to “Rule 21 of the Rules of Civil Procedure, R.R.O. 1990, Reg. 194” (Steinnagel v Workplace Health, 2016 ONSC 2138 (CanLII), 2015), the defendants in this case brought motions to have the pleading struck and the action dismissed. The judge found that the plaintiff’s pleading were sufficient and the defendant’s motions were dismissed. 

This case is actually an example of tort/employment law. However, it does relate to my topic due to the fact that one of the defendants in the case is WSIB.  The WSIB (Workplace Safety and Insurance Board) operates under the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act. 
 I chose this topic and this case because I think the plaintiff’s “statement of claim” to be 100% believable due to my own ongoing personal experience with the WSIB. I was permanently injured at work eight years ago. I worked as an assembler for a “feeder” company, making car seats for General Motors. I suffered a repetitive strain injury that has been diagnosed as focal dystonia. Due to this injury, I have lost the use of three fingers of my dominant right hand. My injury was diagnosed by the director of the WSIB Hand Clinic at Toronto Western Hospital and my claim was initially approved as a repetitive strain injury by WSIB. However, approximately a year after my injury (one week before Christmas) and completely out of the blue, my case manager called to tell me that my diagnosis had changed, that my claim was being denied, and the cheque I had received the week before would be my last one. This issue was initiated by a “nurse practitioner,” employed by WSIB. She decided (after reading my file) she was more qualified to diagnose my injury than the director of the WSIB Hand Clinic and she changed my diagnosis to allow the denial of my claim.  It took me three months to straighten this out and have my “loss of earnings” benefits re-instated. This experience was just the first in my ongoing battle with WSIB. 

I have to admit, my research on this topic was not compiled specifically for this assignment. I have extensively researched this topic over the last eight years. 
 What I have learned that most surprised me was that companies receive rebates from WSIB, some of them, soon after being fined for occurrences of employee injury or even death. The monetary value of these rebates are often much more than the fines they received for the death or injury sustained by their employee. 
 I am most likely to remember that Workers’ Compensation statutes were introduced to guarantee workers the right to compensation for work related illness or accident. Although the original objective of this legislation was protecting the rights of injured workers, I do not believe that the system is accomplishing this.