If a job injury put you out of work in Franklin, Wisconsin law is supposed to cover your medical care and replace part of the wages you lose while you heal. In practice, collecting what the law owes you is rarely as simple as filing a form. The clock starts running the day you are hurt, the insurer investigates before it pays a dollar, and when a denial arrives it comes with a written reason but not the whole story. Understanding how the system works — and what it actually owes an injured worker — is what separates a claim that pays from one that quietly stalls.

Mays Law Office represents injured workers across Wisconsin from our office in Middleton. We handle the paperwork, the disputes, and the hearings so you can put your attention where it belongs: on getting better. Call 608-305-4518 for a free consultation before you accept a denial or sign anything the insurer puts in front of you.

Workers’ Compensation Attorneys in Franklin, WI

Attorney Lisa Pierobon Mays has focused her practice on Wisconsin workers’ compensation for more than 25 years. She was admitted to the Wisconsin bar in 1995 and earned her J.D. from Thomas M. Cooley Law School cum laude. She served on the Wisconsin Association of Workers’ Compensation Attorneys Board of Directors for District 7 from 2001 to 2025 — a long-standing seat at the center of the state’s workers’ compensation bar.

That background matters because a workers’ compensation claim is a legal proceeding, not a benefits application you fill out and wait on. Whether your wage benefits are calculated on the right average weekly wage, whether a lasting impairment is rated fairly, and whether a denial can actually hold up all turn on details the insurer has no duty to explain to you. Those are the questions we start asking at the first phone call, not after a check goes missing.

When to Call a Workers’ Comp Lawyer

Call us right away if any of the following describes your situation:

• Your claim was denied, or the insurer says your injury didn’t happen at work.
• Wage-replacement checks stopped, are late, or are smaller than they should be.
• The insurer wants you seen by its own doctor for an “independent” medical examination.
• You have a permanent restriction and can’t go back to the job you had.
• Someone is pushing you to settle before anyone knows how bad the injury really is.
• Your condition built up over time — a repetitive-strain or exposure injury — and the insurer disputes that work caused it.
• You’re being steered toward a doctor you didn’t choose.

What Workers’ Compensation Pays in Wisconsin

If a work injury keeps you off the job in Wisconsin, the law replaces part of your lost income and covers your medical care. While you are healing and unable to work, Temporary Total Disability pays two-thirds of your average weekly wage, up to a state maximum that changes by injury year. For injuries in 2025 that ceiling is $1,326 per week; for injuries on or after January 1, 2026, it rises to $1,375 per week. If you can work in a lighter or part-time role but earn less than before, Temporary Partial Disability makes up a share of that wage gap. When an injury leaves lasting impairment, Permanent Partial Disability applies. Scheduled injuries — to arms, legs, hands, feet, or vision and hearing — pay a percentage of a set number of weeks based on your functional loss. Unscheduled injuries to the back, spine, or head are measured against a whole-person or earning-capacity standard, up to a 1,000-week base; the maximum PPD rate is $446 per week in 2025 and $454 per week effective April 1, 2026. If an injury permanently ends your working life, Permanent Total Disability pays at the TTD rate for life. Should a worker die, eligible dependents can receive death benefits — generally subject to a maximum of four times the worker’s average annual wage — plus a burial allowance capped at $10,000. Throughout, reasonable and necessary medical treatment is covered in full, and you are reimbursed for mileage to and from appointments at 51 cents per mile.

Deadlines That Can Make or Break Your Claim

Timing decides many Wisconsin workers’ compensation claims, so the clock deserves your attention from day one. You have 30 days to report a work injury to your employer, counted from the injury or from when you knew or ought to have known the nature of your disability and its relation to your work. A late report can be excused if the employer was not misled by the delay. The deadline to formally pursue a claim depends on the injury. Most single-event traumatic injuries carry a six-year statute of limitations (for injuries on or after March 2, 2016); an occupational disease that builds over time has no statute of limitations. The six-year period runs from the injury date or from the last payment of compensation, whichever is later (payments for medical treatment or burial don’t count). A separate two-year rule in Wis. Stat. § 102.12 can bar a claim sooner: if nothing beyond medical treatment or burial expenses has been paid and no application is filed within two years after the injury (or after you knew or ought to have known the nature of your disability and its relation to your work), the right to compensation is barred unless your employer knew or should have known of the injury within that time. Wage-replacement benefits do not start on the day you are hurt. Wisconsin applies a three-day waiting period (Sundays don’t count toward it unless you normally work Sundays), so wage-replacement begins after those three days. Those first three days are paid back to you if your disability continues after the 7th calendar day, or if the injury causes a permanent disability. Under DWD’s administrative performance standard, insurers are measured on paying 80 percent of first indemnity payments within 14 days of the injury or last day worked — and separate penalties apply to late payments. From there the claim flows in a predictable order: you report the injury, the insurer investigates and either pays or denies, and any dispute over what you are owed moves into the state’s hearing process.

Workers’ Comp in Franklin: Local Reality

Franklin sits in Milwaukee County, and its economy is built around sprawling business and industrial parks, including the Franklin Industrial Park and the 425-acre Franklin Business Park. The city targets advanced manufacturing and processing operations — work spanning nonmetallic mineral products, glass fabrication, packaging and paper, printing, plastics, and electrical equipment. That kind of work carries a real injury profile. Fabrication, assembly, and processing operations put workers around powered machinery, moving lines, and material handling — the ingredients for both acute trauma, such as lacerations and crush injuries, and cumulative trauma, such as repetitive-strain conditions that surface gradually. Processing and manufacturing floors also produce their share of slip-and-fall injuries on wet or hard surfaces. And the skilled tradespeople who build and maintain these industrial sites face the standard construction hazards: falls from height and being struck by heavy equipment. Whatever the sector, the law is the same — if the injury arose out of your employment and occurred in the course of it, it is compensable — but the kind of work you do often shapes the fight over whether it did.

If a Franklin worker’s claim is denied or disputed, the worker can take it into Wisconsin’s hearing system — and that system changed at the start of 2026. Since January 1, 2026, workers’ compensation hearings are handled by the Worker’s Compensation Division within the Department of Workforce Development, which brought claim administration and adjudication back under one agency. DWD says hearings are generally held near the municipality of the applicant’s residence and names the time and place in its written notice; it holds them at seven locations — Madison, Milwaukee, Appleton, Eau Claire, Green Bay, La Crosse and Wausau. For Franklin workers in Milwaukee County, the nearest of them is Milwaukee. Any party may ask for a mediation conference with an administrative law judge, which DWD may schedule once all other parties agree in writing (Wis. Admin. Code DWD 80.16), and many claims settle without ever reaching a contested hearing.

How We Fight Denied Claims

Insurers deny claims for many reasons. Possible grounds to deny or reduce benefits: they may argue the injury did not arise out of and in the course of employment, that your violation of the employer’s drug or alcohol policy was causal to the injury, or that it was caused by your failure to use safety devices that are provided as required by law, adequately maintained and whose use is reasonably enforced by the employer, or to obey a reasonable safety rule that the employer adopted and reasonably enforces and that you had notice of. If the employer proves that last defense, compensation and death benefits are cut by 15 percent, with the reduction capped at $15,000. A drug or alcohol violation that caused the injury bars compensation and death benefits, but the employer remains liable for medical treatment and related incidental benefits. When an insurer denies liability, it must tell you in writing why, and it must advise you of your right to a hearing. You contest a denial by filing a Hearing Application, Form WKC-7 — after DWD’s informal process if you have no attorney — which also keeps the statute of limitations from expiring while your case is pending, though it adds no time afterward (the period ends at the final disposition of the case or at its original expiration date, whichever is later, and the clock continues to run if the application is dismissed without prejudice). Since January 1, 2026, the dispute moves through the Worker’s Compensation Division at the Department of Workforce Development, whose administrative law judges hear these cases. Any party may ask for a mediation conference with an administrative law judge, which DWD may schedule once all other parties agree in writing (Wis. Admin. Code DWD 80.16); if the case does not settle and the claim is ready for hearing, DWD may schedule a formal hearing, with sworn testimony and cross-examination. A party unhappy with the judge’s decision can petition the Labor and Industry Review Commission for review, and DWD or the commission must receive the petition within 21 days after DWD mails the decision; a LIRC ruling can then be taken to circuit court — by filing and serving a summons and complaint — within 30 days of the commission’s order. Two rights matter throughout. You may choose your own treating physician in Wisconsin (and make a second choice by notifying your employer or its insurer), and the insurer may require you to attend an Independent Medical Examination — but it must pay your necessary expenses, including travel, in advance and give you a copy of the report as soon as it receives it. These are your rights under the law, not a promise of any particular result.

That last point is where cases are often won or lost. An insurer’s “independent” medical examiner may rate your impairment lower than your own doctor does, or attribute your injury to something other than work. When your doctor and the insurer’s doctor disagree, the dispute is resolved through the hearing process — and building that record correctly is exactly what our Wisconsin workers’ compensation practice is built to do.

Franklin Workers’ Comp Questions We Hear Most

What if the insurer sends me to its own doctor?

The insurer has the right to require an Independent Medical Examination by a physician it selects, to assess your treatment, the extent of disability, and whether you have reached a healing plateau. You still keep your own treating physician. For the IME, the insurer must pay your necessary expenses, including travel, in advance, and you are entitled to a copy of the resulting report. You may have your own doctor, one observer and, if you have difficulty speaking or understanding English, your own translator present at the exam. When your doctor and the IME doctor disagree, the dispute is resolved through the hearing process.

Does workers’ comp cover an injury that built up over time?

Yes. Workers’ compensation covers not only single-event injuries but also occupational diseases — conditions that develop over time from repetitive activity or cumulative exposure on the job. These claims have no statute of limitations. Most traumatic injuries, by contrast, carry a six-year statute of limitations (for injuries on or after March 2, 2016), counted from the injury or the last payment of compensation, whichever is later (payments for medical treatment or burial don’t count). In a manufacturing and processing city like Franklin, repetitive-strain conditions are a familiar part of the caseload. Separately, Wis. Stat. § 102.12 can bar the right to compensation after two years, counted from the injury or from when you knew or ought to have known the nature of your disability and its relation to your work, if nothing beyond medical or burial expenses has been paid, no application has been filed and your employer neither knew nor should have known of the injury.

What if I can’t return to my old job?

If permanent restrictions keep you from your former occupation, you may qualify for vocational retraining. When you enroll in and participate in a qualifying program, the insurer is responsible for additional Temporary Total Disability benefits for up to 80 weeks, plus travel, meals, and lodging tied to the training. If a permanent unscheduled injury reduces your long-term earning power, you may also pursue a Loss of Earning Capacity claim, which weighs your age, education, and functional limitations against the 1,000-week base.

Is there a waiting period before benefits start?

Yes. Wage-replacement benefits do not begin on the day you are injured. Wisconsin applies a three-day waiting period (Sundays don’t count toward it unless you normally work Sundays), so indemnity starts after those three days. If your disability continues after the 7th calendar day, or the injury causes a permanent disability, those first three days are paid back to you retroactively.

Where would my Franklin hearing be held?

DWD says hearings are generally held near the municipality of the applicant’s residence; Franklin is in Milwaukee County. The DWD holds hearings at seven locations across Wisconsin; Milwaukee is the nearest of them to Franklin, and DWD names the time and place in its written notice. Since January 1, 2026, these hearings are run by the Worker’s Compensation Division at the Department of Workforce Development, and any party may ask for a mediation conference with an administrative law judge, which DWD may schedule once all other parties agree in writing (Wis. Admin. Code DWD 80.16).

Get a Free Consultation

Se Habla Español — Call 608-305-4518

Whether your claim was just denied or you’re still waiting on the first check, the sooner you understand your rights, the stronger your position. Call 608-305-4518 or contact Mays Law Office online for a free consultation. We represent injured workers across Wisconsin, including Franklin and Milwaukee County, from our office at Mays Law Office, LLC — 6405 Century Ave STE 103, Middleton, WI 53562.