Can My Employer Force Light Duty After a New Jersey Work Injury?

Suitability compares the written medical restrictions to the actual tasks, schedule, travel, and physical demands of the offered role — not to the job title on a memo.

'Sitting in the break room' for eight hours, or answering phones in a loud warehouse without breaks your doctor ordered, may not be suitable even if labeled light duty.

Ask for the offer in writing with essential functions listed. Compare line by line to the work note. Photograph both.

If pain medications impair safety-sensitive work, say so with medical support. Safety is part of suitability.

Commute length and driving restrictions matter. A 'sedentary' job fifty miles away may be unsuitable if you cannot drive or sit that long.

Piece-rate and productivity quotas that ignore restrictions make an offer unsuitable even if the chair is comfortable.

Temporary benefits may be affected when suitable work within restrictions is available and refused without justification — but stopping checks based on an unsuitable offer or a paper release that contradicts treating reality is contestable.

Document every offer, every refusal reason, and every medical update the same week. Motions for temporary benefits need a clean timeline.

Partial return with reduced wages may implicate temporary partial concepts. Keep paystubs from the light-duty period.

Do not ghost HR. Communicate through counsel when disputes heat up, but do not ignore notices that could be used as refusal evidence.

If you attempt light duty and leave early due to pain, document the time, the task, and the medical follow-up the same day. Silent disappearances look like job abandonment.

MMI marks a plateau in improvement and usually shifts focus toward permanency valuation; it is not a magic permission slip for full-duty work that still violates residual restrictions.

Some workers return full duty with lasting impairment and still pursue permanent partial disability. Others cannot sustain work at all — permanent total and SSDI analyses may enter.

IME releases to full duty that contradict surgeons should be reviewed before you celebrate or despair.

Settling permanency while light duty is unstable can undervalue the claim. Sequence matters.

Functional capacity evaluations are sometimes used to justify full duty. Treat them seriously, report accurate effort and pain, and tell counsel if the test ignored your surgical restrictions.

Document timing — claim filed, benefits requested, then sudden discipline or termination narratives — and call counsel promptly. Retaliation issues can raise separate legal questions beyond the compensation docket.

Kaplan & Kaplan represents injured workers only. Ken Kaplan, Esq. will not tell you to ignore real medical limits to appease a manager.

Bring the light-duty offer, work notes, and any write-ups to a free consult. Early documentation is everything.

If a third-party injury caused the disability, return-to-work fights still affect the compensation file and should stay coordinated.

Write-ups that begin only after the claim — attendance points during authorized therapy, sudden policy enforcement — should be saved in a dedicated folder for counsel.

Save shift schedules showing you were removed from overtime only after the claim. Pattern evidence matters.