What Kevin’s Case Taught Me About the Difference Between a Claim and a Client

What Kevin’s Case Taught Me About the Difference Between a Claim and a Client

I’ve handled more than 3,000 workers’ compensation claims since 1989, and most of them follow a predictable shape: injury, treatment, rating, payment, done. 

Kevin’s case has stuck with me because it didn’t end the first time it looked finished — and because the second time around, the real work wasn’t legal at all. It was listening.

2014: A Knee Injury and a Job on the Line

Kevin came to me in 2014 the way a lot of my clients do — not because he’d decided to sue anybody, but because a few of his coworkers had already been through the process with me and told him to at least come talk. 

That first meeting is free, and I mean that literally: no obligation, no pressure, just a conversation about what happened and what his options were.

What struck me about Kevin from the start was that he wasn’t angry. He was scared — scared of losing a job he’d had for years over a knee that wasn’t cooperating.

We got him rated by his orthopedic doctor, and then I made the insurance carrier pay him on that impairment rating instead of letting them lowball it — which they almost always try to do first. 

Here’s the thing most people don’t understand about a Form 26A rating payment under North Carolina law: while yes it is a settlement, the case IS NOT OVER. 

It doesn’t end your claim, and it doesn’t end your job. Kevin walked away with $10,000, and more importantly, he walked away still employed. He went back to that plant and worked there for another eight years.

2024: The Same Client, a Completely Different Conversation

Ten years later, Kevin called me again. He’d slipped off a ladder and hit both knees on a metal bar. My first instinct, honestly, was to run the same playbook — rating, payment, back to work. That’s usually the right instinct where a client wants to keep their job.

But Kevin stopped me. He told me straight: this injury wasn’t as bad as the first one, but he’d put in his 30 years, he was three months from Medicare, and he was done risking his body on that plant floor. 

He wanted to retire on his union pension and spend his time fishing and playing golf. Then he asked me if I could help him do that.

That question changed what this case was. It wasn’t a medical claim anymore — it was a “retirement by settlement” decision that happened to run through workers’ comp. 

North Carolina lets you resolve a claim entirely through what’s called a Clincher Agreement, where the insurance carrier buys out your claim(s) which the Industrial Commission has to approve. That’s the tool that fit what Kevin actually wanted, not another rating payment that would have left him tied to a job he was trying to leave.

I negotiated the settlement with his retirement timeline in mind — his pension eligibility, his Medicare start date, the fact that he had zero interest in going back to that ladder. A month later, it was done. Kevin walked away with an additional $20,000 and the exit he’d asked for.

What I Actually Learned From This One

The legal mechanics of Kevin’s two claims weren’t complicated — a rating payment in 2014, a Clincher settlement in 2024. I could teach either one to a first-year associate in an afternoon. 

What I can’t teach as easily is the part that actually mattered here: recognizing that the second claim, a minor injury, wasn’t really about the ladder.

If I’d handled 2024 the way I handled 2014 — chase the rating, get him back to full duty, move on — I’d have technically done my job and missed what Kevin was actually seeking. 

He wasn’t worried about the knees this time. He was worried that a third fall would cost him the quiet and happy retirement he’d already earned.

That’s the part of this work that doesn’t show up in a statute. Clients don’t always tell you what they want in legal terms. Sometimes it comes out as “I want to go fishing,” and it’s on you to hear that as the actual instruction it is.

Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome in any future case. Every workers’ compensation claim depends on its own facts, evaluated under North Carolina General Statute Chapter 97 and reviewed by the N.C. Industrial Commission.

If a workplace injury has you weighing your job against your health, or wondering what retirement even looks like from here, let’s talk. The first conversation costs nothing.

About the Author

B. Perry Morrison Jr.

B. Perry Morrison Jr. is a North Carolina attorney (Bar No. 16376) and founder of Morrison Law Firm, PLLC in Wilson, North Carolina. Since 1989, he has represented injured workers, Social Security Disability claimants, and personal injury victims throughout Eastern North Carolina, handling more than 3,000 workers' compensation claims before the North Carolina Industrial Commission. He concentrates his practice on workers' compensation, Social Security Disability, personal injury, and wrongful death cases, representing claimants exclusively rather than employers or insurance companies.

Mr. Morrison is admitted to practice before the North Carolina Supreme Court, all North Carolina state courts, the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the U.S. District Courts for the Eastern and Middle Districts of North Carolina. He has held leadership roles within the North Carolina Bar Association, including serving as Chair of the Litigation Section, and has earned the AV Preeminent® peer rating for legal ability and professional ethics. Through decades of advocacy, he has helped injured and disabled individuals navigate complex legal claims while protecting their rights and access to benefits.