La Barbecue is a popular Austin joint. It is in the Texas Monthly Top 50, though not in the Top 10.
The owner and manager of La Barbecue have been criminally indicted.
What does that mean? Here’s how the Statesman explains it. La Barbecue didn’t have worker’s comp insurance, and hadn’t had it since November of 2014. Sometime in July of 2016, one of their employees was hurt “while operating a piece of kitchen equipment”. It sounds like the injuries were pretty serious: I’ll get into that in a minute.
Four days later, Clem contacted Paychex Insurance to get workers’ compensation coverage, something the restaurant had been without since November 2014.
Clem did not disclose her employee’s injuries to the agent but asked that the new policy be backdated to July 1, 2016, three weeks before the employee was hurt, the Texas Department of Insurance reported.
This kind of strikes me as equivalent to being in a car accident, then calling your insurance agent to get backdated coverage. I would call this “insurance fraud”. But: I am not a lawyer.
Which may be true. But it is legal to obtain a backdated policy, then make a claim against that policy for an accident that happened while coverage was not in place?
According to the article, Travelers paid out “$350,000 in medical and indemnity benefits”. In addition, “The insurance company is also responsible for lifetime care of the injured employee.”
If they are convicted, supposedly the two can be made to pay restitution “up to double the amount Travelers already paid to the injured worker in benefits”.
I’d hate to lose a good barbecue joint (though I’ve never had a chance to eat at La Barbecue). But I think this goes to show at least one thing: it’s just ignorant not to have worker’s comp insurance.
