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Nov. 14, 2022

623: JUSTICE for Workers Injured By Employer-Mandated Vaccines

On today's episode, I'm joined by Ben Carlisle, the worker’s rights attorney for New York seeking to obtain justice for workers who were injured by the COVID vaccines.

On today's episode, I'm joined by Ben Carlisle, the worker’s rights attorney for New York seeking to obtain justice for workers who were injured by the COVID vaccines.


Ben explains how his team has been working tirelessly to help get COVID vaccine victims compensated and treated. He also shares some insight into how these victims will be able to obtain compensation in the future as well as what he thinks this means for other workers across the country who have been injured by their employer-mandated vaccines.

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Transcript

Brian Nichols  0:04  
seeking justice for workers who are injured by the COVID vaccine? Yeah, let's talk about that. Focusing on winning arguments. We're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win in the world of politics, teaching you how to meet people where they're at on the issues they care about. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show. You're on The Brian Nichols Show. And, of course, another fun episode, I am as always your humble host. I prefer Stratus ip studio, you're in lucky in Indiana, don't let outdated cyber security or Business Technology put your company at risk. Learn more at the Brian Nichols show.com, forward slash Stratus ip Stratus ip Business Technology simplified. Alright, so let's go back to a topic that we've been talking about here for let's see, well, I thought it was supposed to be two weeks, originally, right, two weeks to slow the spread. That's what this started out as. And that turned into two years, two and a half years. And then with that, all that came with it, right. And we're talking obviously about the COVID pandemic and the ensuing government policies and regulations. And amongst those was a sneaky proposition by the Biden administration to force of employers to get their employees vaccinated through OSHA. Now that ended up getting struck down before we got too far. But it was still put into place by a lot of organizations across the board regardless, and a lot of employers were forcing their employees to either face a choice, get the job or get fired, get lost. And if you are an employee who ended up getting the job and suffered some bodily harm, you're probably thinking, Well, what do I do? Is there a place to turn that I can't sue these pharmaceutical providers? So who can I sue? Well, today's guest is going to answer that question, because his law firm is actually not only answering that question with a solution, but also they're helping directly those who were impacted by the negative impacts of the COVID vaccines when they were forced by their employers. Ben Carlyle, thanks for joining the program.

Ben Carlisle  2:06  
Thanks for having me, Brian. So real, real pleasure.

Brian Nichols  2:09  
No, absolutely. Thank you for joining us. And looking forward to digging into a very important topic. This is something we've been talking about here in the show for like I said, two and a half plus years now at this point. And you look at the end of the day, what's been going on, folks have been forced, more or less to make a decision, and it's a personal health decision in order to keep their jobs, which still blows me away that we are at that point here that that was a topic of conversation that we were not only okay with having but a lot of folks were open in promoting and pushing down from a government perspective still blows me away. But thankfully, we have folks like you who are out there fighting the good fight. And thankfully, fighting back. You've been doing that in terms of the law. Talk to us. What are you doing there to help those COVID-19 of folks who are rather COVID-19 Vax folks, were forced to get forced to get the job by their employers.

Ben Carlisle  3:00  
Well, I mean, what I've been doing, you know, two parts of it, I've been advocating against it for a very long time. My wife's one of the people who got caught up in this my wife's in ER, doctor, she worked all through the pandemic in New York, specifically in Buffalo, New York. And our governor came out with a vaccine mandate, which went into effect, I think it was by November of 21, every healthcare worker had to take it in New York, she stripped away religious exemptions, and basically the only medical exemption she would allow is, if you took the first one and injured you, you didn't have to take the second one, which is obviously absurd. So my wife got caught up in that my wife refused. She lost her job in November of 21, she found a new job down in Florida. And so for the last year, my wife's been going back and forth, she spent two weeks in Florida, she comes back to New York. So she actually just left yesterday, I took her to the airport, I won't see her again for two more weeks. So this is something that I'm extremely passionate about. So you know, I didn't just get into this, this area of law looking for a couple of quick bucks trying to chase you know, people who are injured and trying to make some money to me, it's not about that at all. It's it's trying to find some justice for people who are injured and also trying to put into place something that would hopefully give employers a moment of cause or a moment of pause to say, You know what this may be it's not worth it if I'm gonna get sued if I do this. So what I decided to do, I've got 13 years of experience doing workers compensation defense work. So you know, I've spent 13 years representing employers and insurance carriers, I know all the tricks that they use to try to get out of workers compensation claims, so I decided to open my own firm and represent the injured workers instead. So it's not necessarily a lawsuit that I'm pursuing. It's just a workers compensation claim for benefits. So a little different than a lawsuit. But basically, if you are required to take the vaccine by your employer, either as a condition of continuing employment or maintaining employment, or obtaining employment rather, and you got injured by that vaccine, that is absolutely an injury that was sustained within the course of your employment, you're entitled to workers compensation benefits. So that's what I've been sounding the alarm. I'm only licensed in New York. So I can only hope or help rather New York claimants at this time. But I'm coordinating with attorneys all over the country trying to find attorneys in all 50 states who will take these types of cases. So it's pretty straightforward. You file a claim for benefits, we got to find a doctor that says that your injury relates to that the vaccine that you're required to take and then you people hopefully can obtain workers compensation benefits.

Brian Nichols  5:32  
How about that. So it is, I guess, important. And this is, this is going back to one of the main red flags that a lot of us were raising all the way back, and it feels like forever ago, because it feels like COVID time just went by so slow, but I think is all the way back at the end of 2020, when we heard that this was going to become possibly a thing. And it really started with the COVID passports, right? And that was being discussed, you might go eat at your favorite restaurant while you're gonna show this little passport or to go eat there to show you got your vaccine. And I was like, that's a little a little dystopian. And then, you know, having loved ones and family members telling you hey, you did you didn't get the facts, right. Yeah, I don't know if we want you at Thanksgiving. Again, really weird, really uncomfortable. That was also going into last year as well. I know a lot of folks were experiencing that. So I think you look at where we are now, in terms of there were so many people who, up until the Biden administration floated this with the OSHA mandates. A lot of folks didn't get the initial vaccine, a lot of folks were hesitant. As matter of fact, a lot of folks who were pushing the vaccine, under the Biden administration, were the same folks who were hesitant when it was Donald Trump's vaccine back in the prior administration. So you look, all of a sudden, the administration puts this, they float out this OSHA mandate for the vaccine. If you're working I forget that the parameters but for it was large corporations 100 or less days,

Ben Carlisle  6:57  
but was it 100 or more employees? Okay, nevermind,

Brian Nichols  7:00  
it wasn't massive corporations, okay. 100 or more employees, which would be like your average, like small or medium business to, which still is mind blowing, that that was going to be the requirement. So a lot of companies just said, Alright, we're going to institute this already at the onset, we're gonna we're gonna put this in place, without government mandating it, even though we're preparing for government to mandate it. And I think right there, that was the moment where you saw, okay, the uptick started to happen. So a lot of folks there who weren't going to get the vaccine all sudden, were forced to get the vaccine, or to your point face that decision like your wife did. So let's kind of go forward. And this is the part that it hurts a little bit, but at least we're seeing some type of justice is that it's taken to this point where folks are actually showing harm. And before we were called conspiracy theorists for even putting this out there as a possibility. But now we're getting real data. And I think that's the important part to focus on is the data. Ben. So talk to us about what you're seeing in terms of the increase in worker claims from injuries sustained from the vaccine?

Ben Carlisle  8:06  
Yeah, I mean, like, to your point when it first came out. I think a lot of people assumed that it worked, but they still didn't want to take it. But now that you find out that things don't work, I mean, Rachel will insky acknowledged in March of 21, that the Vex Well, she claimed in March of 21, that they stopped transmission and infection and that has been rolled back. I think even Pfizer now is acknowledging that they don't stop transmission. They didn't even test it to see if it does that. And everyone has acknowledged that they don't stop infection. We started off by calling these things breakthrough infections. But yeah, I think the problem is getting quite bad though. British Medical Journal, the editor just came out and said that serious adverse events are now about one in 800. That's something that will take you to the hospital. He explained that with other vaccines, you see serious adverse events, somewhere in the neighborhood of one to two and a million. So, you know, one and 800 It's, it's really, really, really a quite high number. So my phone's ringing off the hook again, I can only help New York claimants right now, but you're starting to see a lot of neurologic disorders people have had strokes. I've got to two claimants I'm working with right now that haven't worked in over a year, they haven't been able to work since they got the vaccine. So and these are people, one of my clients, found herself wandering around on Broadway didn't even know how she got there. Just people another client I've got he's been rushed to the ER seven times in the last year with ongoing problems he's had so I think a lot of these people are living in the shadows because some of it's a little bit of shame that, you know, they didn't want to take these things and they, you know, their gut told them not to but they succumb to the pressure that their employer and society and their family and friends put on them. So they don't want to talk about it. In a lot of these people, you know, they're hiding these disabilities. It's not something you want to come out and say, Hey, I've got this problem. No one wants to talk about their medical conditions, but I think as people realize that they have options. Now, you know, the one thing everyone's heard so often is that, you know, you can't sue Pfizer, you can't sue moderna, you can't sue the government, and people think they have no options. That's I think that's why people are kind of being quiet. But now that people realize that there is a real avenue of getting justice through workers compensation, people are starting to come forward and speak out, which is nice to see.

Brian Nichols  10:26  
I'm afraid to say this. But thankfully, we have rumble and Odyssey as backups to our YouTube. But I think it's pretty much safe to say that there are folks who did receive the vaccine that they actually perished. And from the results, and the the, the results or the feedback, I guess we were looking for reaction. There we go. I'm like, what's the word? The reaction to the vaccine? And that rate there, I guess, to those folks, is there any thing that the family can do in terms of using your services to to go after the employers as well?

Ben Carlisle  11:03  
Absolutely. And in New York, and I'm assuming that's the same in most states, you can bring a death claim after someone dies, if it's work related. So absolutely, what would happen in that instance, you'd still need medical, so the family would take the medical reports, we'd find an independent Doctor Who would review the medical reports and opine as to whether the death was related to the mandatory vaccine. If it was then we'd file a claim for death benefits with the workers compensation system. So that's absolutely, you know, it applies to people who have injured and it also applies to people who have perished from the injury.

Brian Nichols  11:38  
Now, what are you seeing in terms of success from going out and having some of these these cases? Are you are you winning? Are we are we seeing success here, as we're going against some of these employers?

Ben Carlisle  11:49  
So right now, you know, I started my firm in I want to say late August, so I've just started putting claims through the system. And it's, it's not workers compensation goes so much quicker than bringing a traditional lawsuit. Traditional lawsuits could take three, four years. So workers compensation, you file your paperwork with the board, you wait a couple months for hearing, at the initial hearing with the judge will make a ruling of his whether there's sufficient evidence to proceed, if you get that ruling, you go to the next step, which is a trial on issues of causation and whether the injury was sustained within the course and scope of employment. So I've gotten a couple of cases to that to that, over that first hump. And we're still waiting on trials. But I've got a colleague here in Buffalo, and I think he has the very first case, he's already successfully gone through, gotten a finding of sufficient evidence to proceed, took it to trial and got a finding from a judge that it's compensable. So it's definitely been shown to work. Now, of course, that case is on appeal. So we're gonna have to wait and see. He just got that ruling. I think last month, I'll have my first trial in January. So I'm gonna have my first ruling sometime in mid January. So absolutely, I know, we can get through the first time to get a ruling from a judge that says it's compensable it remains to be seen. If you appeal and workers comp, you start with an administrative law judge, then it goes to the board panel to make a ruling. So it remains to be seen what the board panel is going to do with these cases. But I know that the judge is at least a judge has looked at the merits and said, yeah, these things fit under the Workers Compensation Law. And I know the defense's, that they're throwing out there that complete nonsense defense is the defense. My buddy is dealing with this. Hey, you know, we didn't want to make that people take this shot. The government made us because even though OSHA mandate got thrown down, there's still the CMS mandate, which covers any hospital in America that takes reimbursement from the government. All of those employees are still covered under this. And then New York, Mayor Adams in New York City made every municipal worker take the job, he required any employer who operates a business in New York City to require all of their employees to take it. So there's still a ton of people who were required to take it even though the OSHA mandate was lifted. So why don't so that defense that these people are raising a lot of them are going to start raising as Hey, Mary Adams made us do it. Governor Hoko made us do it. Joe Biden made us do it. We didn't want to do this. They made us but that's not a defense in workers compensation on workers compensation law, you get three defenses. You can say it wasn't really an accident, like you know, idiopathic, you know, your knee just gave out it's, it's not because you tripped or anything. That's one defense. The second defense is you didn't provide proper notice. The third defense is, yeah, you're injured, but it's not causally related to your employment. Those are the three things. So you know, the government made us do this is not a proper defense, and it's going to get thrown out. So it remains to be seen what the board panel would do. And then after that, you would go to the third department appellate division in New York, and if you want to appeal it further, it would go to the court of appeals. So these cases are all in the very initial stages, but it's looking promising. We're getting judges finding sufficient medical evidence supersede we're getting judges finding these cases are compensable. Just it remains to be seen what the Workers Compensation Board does with these cases. But I think they're gonna throw out that defense because it's, it's, it's just not codified it, there's no state law to back it up. There's no statutes to back up that defense that they're making

Brian Nichols  15:17  
any feedback from the unions in terms of supporting or standing against you what you're doing here,

Ben Carlisle  15:24  
nothing against us. But absolutely nothing supporting us either. The unions, I'm really, really disappointed. I know a lot of friends who lost their jobs. Because my wife's a doctor, a lot of her friends are nurses and other doctors and a lot of the nurses in New York are covered by unions, and not one of the unions locally here in New York went to bat for any of the healthcare heroes who worked all through the pandemic, the second those mandates came out a lot of them filed equal opportunity employment claims the unions didn't back them up at all, when they were facing termination, the unions didn't back them up at all. When all these people went to their unions and said, Hey, I've been injured. What do I do now? The unions didn't give them any direction. Now, I'm not saying every single union, I'm just saying I haven't seen one union in New York, that stood by their employees, not one union that's trying to help them get workers compensation benefits. Maybe it's because they don't know that this is a possible avenue. And when they do, hopefully, they'll they'll start encouraging their members to file these types of claims and help them with the resources. But given their complete lack of action, fighting for these employees who are facing termination, I'm not overly optimistic that they're going to help their members with these types of claims.

Brian Nichols  16:34  
Yeah, well, who do we see, in many cases pushing a lot of these mandates? And from the top down, mostly, it was the teacher union, or the union bosses. I'm thinking Randi Weingarten just from the teachers union perspective alone, but even across the board, it was mainly the union bosses who were fighting, trying to make it so it's more difficult to go back to work. And with that, including the vaccine mandates. So I'm curious to also from a, I guess, a legal standpoint, you look at anybody who's put their their name and their careers on the line here, it's been really tough. And you're looking at your co workers, in this case, in the legal sense, your other lawyers out there that I'm sure you you graced the Courthouse with what's been the feedback on there? And are they supportive of you taking this route, specifically in this niche of helping workers comp with vaccine injuries?

Ben Carlisle  17:21  
More so than I thought they'd be, although there's a big firm in town that they reached out to me and said, Hey, we don't want to touch these types of cases. And these are people who who represent nothing but claimants but they said, We respect what you're doing. And could we just send our cases, do you because we don't want to get involved in this type of work? And I said, Absolutely. But so I think people kind of quietly respect what I'm doing. But they are not quite ready to just start doing the same type of work themselves. But because I think people don't want to be seen as someone who's, you know, challenging the vaccine. And I can, I can tell you my honest opinion about the vaccine, but I'm not trying to get too political with the vaccine. I'm just trying to help people who are injured. And I wish people could kind of separate those two boxes and realize that, hey, if I help someone who's been injured by a vaccine doesn't mean that I'm anti Vax, it doesn't mean that I want to shut down the whole vaccine system. It just means when someone gets injured, they're entitled to help. And I wish more people would step forward. So maybe it's kind of a wait and see approach see how, see how my case is turned out. Because like I said, there's I know one other attorney who filed this type of claim, but he's not advertising that he's doing this type of law. As far as I know, I'm the only my firm is the only firm in New York that's committed to only taking on these types of cases. I haven't if you do a Lexus search of these types of cases, you're not going to find any there. They're just, you know, we're I don't know, over a year into the mandate, and no one has been litigating these types of cases yet. So I hope, you know, like I said, I hope they're just sitting back and waiting to see how successful we can be with these types of claims. And then they follow my lead. And I'd be tickled pink if people want to follow my lead, because, frankly, if every single person in New York called me who was injured, I would be inundated. I want to hopefully get other attorneys in New York to start representing these types of claims. And frankly, workers compensation is pretty straightforward. So, you know, I'm kind of I'm trying to develop maybe a webinar or something to kind of help people if, if they, if I get too overwhelmed, try to find something to guide people through this process so that they can at least start the claims themselves. Because people should know there's important deadlines with workers compensation. You've got 30 days to provide your employer with notice that you're injured. And then in New York, you have two years from the date of your injury in order to actually file a claim for benefits. So people need to be aware of that if you're having a difficult time finding an attorney who will take your case you you know, at least what you want to do to protect yourself is go ahead and file the initial claims. That way you're not getting burned by the statute limitations. And at least in New York, you can go to the Board's website and it's it very user friendly for claimants. So again, you know, you can't get a hold of me you can't get a hold of another attorney, but you're worried about those statute limitations, you at least want to go online and and file a claim that way you can preserve your claim.

Brian Nichols  20:12  
Thank God, there's people still in my home state like you've been because I left New York because I didn't really feel too hopeful. And, man, you look over the past few years, I was like, Oh, man that kind of was reaffirmed. But man, it's so thankful, Don, I say that as if somebody goes up and visits New York quite frequently to visit my family and such, it is nice to see that there are at least folks out there still fighting the good fight. So thank you for what you're doing. And with that, obviously, folks who are in New York who are looking to get out and reach out for your services, where can they go ahead and contact you and learn more up in New York? And I guess, I know, you mentioned there's not necessarily anybody yet, like you across the country out there. That's leading this, but do you have anybody that you maybe you are saying you should look to as an example of in the future they can lean towards and reach out to if they're not in New York?

Ben Carlisle  21:00  
Well, I mean, stick to my website, because I'm going to what what I'm putting on my website is I'm going to try to start a list of attorneys and other states, and also doctors who will treat vaccine injuries and all the states. So I haven't started compiling that data yet, but I'm going to soon so if people want to reach me, the best way is to go to my website, it's Ben Carlisle, law.com. From there, you can find my email, you can find my phone number, you can find links to all my social media. And as time goes on, as I get more context from other attorneys who are willing to take these types of cases, I'll put links on my website for them to find resources in the other 49 states, and also try to start compiling a list of doctors who are willing to treat these types of patients because that's an important part of these cases, you got to have the medical, you can't just say, hey, you know, I know I was injured, I got, you know, the shot and 30 minutes later, I was injured, you need a doctor to say that. So, you know, trying to those are the resources. I'm trying to link people up with attorneys who will take these cases outside of New York, and doctors who will opine on causal relationship and treat people with these types of injuries.

Brian Nichols  22:08  
Ben, thank you so much for what you're doing. Again, can't thank you enough for going out, fighting the good fight. And yeah, helping folks have an option when they're looking for recourse. So folks, if you're interested in learning more, we're gonna make it really easy for you. Yes, you can go to Ben Carlisle law.com, which I will include there in the show notes, or just again, go to the Brian Nichols show.com. You can find everything over there, including for today's episode, the entire transcript of today's episode, all the links Affer mentioned and then also, by the way, we had the video version of the show, which I mentioned earlier here on YouTube. But we also have our backups over on Odyssey. And on rumble, always just in case we're having conversations like this. But regardless, do me a favor, just hit that subscribe button and little notification bell so you don't miss a single time that we go live. And by the way, folks you want go ahead and support the show, we'll head the Brian Nichols show.com forward slash shop and you can support the show while also getting something in return. We have some awesome, awesome stuff there as you're getting ready for the holidays in terms of great gifts, stocking stuffers, whatever it may be from our I know that's what I call tyranny, Klaus Schwab shirt to our what happened in 1971, liberty, legends, magic money, tree shirts, and more. One more time, Brian Nichols show.com forward slash shop and use code TBN s at checkout for a discount apply to your order. Ben, final thoughts for the audience today? Anything you want the audit to take away?

Ben Carlisle  23:26  
Well, I mean, I would say so. I'm big on the law, but I'm also big on non compliance. So you know, let's make sure we don't get these problems in the future. Their safety and numbers by wife. There's only two doctors and their whole hospital that declined the jab. So of course they did that. But flash forward six months later, Governor Hogle wanted every health care worker to take the booster and so many people stood up stood up and said Nope, we're not taking that she had to actually rescind the mandate. So there's safety in numbers people don't comply don't comply with tyranny. You cannot comply your way out of tyranny. But if you find yourself in trouble, try to find an attorney who will fight for you I'm I'm here in New York doing it everyday for injured workers. So find the resources you need to stand up for your rights.

Brian Nichols  24:14  
There you go, folks, well, there's your call to action and by the way, speaking of call to actions, I do have one more for you folks and that is to go ahead and share today's episode and when you do please go ahead and tag yours truly at be Nichols Liberty beyond that we have some awesome episodes lined up here this week, including some returning guests like Mark Loeb liner from Tiger fitness IFBB pro and also new guests and I'm not sure how it's taken us this long to have him on the show maj Tory will be joining us as well. So you don't miss a single episode. Please do me a favor, hit subscribe on your favorite podcast catcher Oregon. If you're joining us over on the video version of the show again, subscribe button and little notification bell but with that being said, it's Brian Nichols signing off. You're on The Brian Nichols Show for Ben Carlisle.

Disembodied Voice of Matt Ultan, Vocal Artist Extraordinaire  24:57  
We'll see you tomorrow, listening to The Brian Nichols Show. Show find more episodes at the Brian Nichols show.com

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Ben CarlisleProfile Photo

Ben Carlisle

Attorney

I am an attorney licensed in New York. I am based out of Buffalo, but I represent injured workers all over the State. I took a break from the practice of law in 2021/22 to run for office. I am a lifelong Democrat, but I broke with my party over lockdowns and mandates. I opened my own law firm in August 2022 to focus primarily on workers who were injured by employer-mandated vaccines. Prior to running for office, I practice workers' compensation defense with a boutique firm in Buffalo for 13 years.