Standing Up for Arkansas’ Workers
Workers’ Comp, Caldwell Law Firm
There is a well-worn idiom that warns against letting the heart override the head in one’s career. “It’s not personal,” the saying goes. “It’s just business.”
For Andy Caldwell, founder of Caldwell Law Firm in Little Rock, nothing could be further from the truth. As an attorney specializing in workers’ compensation for nearly three decades, he knows the work he does determines if an injured family eats, gets medical care and pays the mortgage. That alone makes the work very, very personal, and Caldwell’s success shows how passion can be put to good use.
“There are always claims that probably should be denied, but there are also a lot of working Arkansans who don’t get benefits to which they’re entitled,” he said. “They’re in a pickle. They can’t work because they’re not getting the workers’ comp benefits. They can’t go to the doctor because a lot of them don’t have private insurance. They’re in a bind.”
After earning his undergraduate degree at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia, Caldwell graduated from the University of Arkansas School of Law in Fayetteville and spent the first few years trying out different areas of the law. At each turn, the legal specialties he thought he wanted to practice — public defender, criminal defense and property law among them — all proved an ill fit.
His initial exposure to workers’ compensation law was practically an accident; a friend of his father, who was a partner at a Little Rock law firm, brought Caldwell aboard to do workers’ comp defense work. After seven years of learning the ropes from payers’ perspectives, Caldwell hung his shingle and switched sides.
“I’d had enough of representing insurance companies,” he said, “so I decided to go out on my own and start doing claimant’s work, representing injured workers.”
Caldwell said in addition to questions of fairness, the work he does also pays tangible dividends for the business community and society as a whole, since the timely delivery of workers’ comp benefits are often critical to employees getting back to living a productive working life.
“Not only does an employer lose an employee for a certain period of time, but if they’re a certain size of employer, under the Family and Medical Leave Act, they have to keep that job open,” Caldwell said. “They’re down an employee, but they can’t have somebody replace that person for a period of time.
“From the injured worker’s side, if they’re not getting their benefits and can’t work, they don’t have money coming in to feed their family or get treatment. They end up trying to get on all sorts of governmental benefits. I don’t want insurance companies putting the burden of what should be their responsibility on taxpayers.”
For as noble a cause as that sounds, Caldwell still has to fight tooth and nail for his clients, saying Arkansas is “a very employer-friendly state” when it comes to workers’ comp disputes. He added that changing that through the statehouse has been slow in coming.
“It has been a hard row to hoe,” he said. “I’ve been doing this for almost 27 years, and when I first started, there were laws in effect that were somewhat friendly towards claimants. That’s not the case anymore.
“There are some changes that were started the last legislative session, but they were tabled. It’s my understanding that there are some changes that will at least be looked at in committee, but of course, no one knows whether or not they’re going to make it through. Hopefully, some changes will be made. I think we still have a long way to go to get workers’ comp law at least somewhat consistent and just for both sides.”
Regardless of what politicians and big business does or does not do, Caldwell intends to remain standing in the breach between them and the working men and women of Arkansas who need help.
“I went into this field because I felt like there was a real need, and I’ve been doing it ever since,” he said. “I love what I do.”
Photo by Kat Holitik
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