Injured offshore workers: beware of your employer stalking your medical history

According to Wikipedia:

Stalking is a term commonly used to refer to unwanted, obsessive attention by individuals (and sometimes groups of people) to others. Stalking behaviors are related toharassment and intimidation. The word "stalking" is used, with some differing meanings, in psychology and psychiatry and also in some legal jurisdictions as a term for a criminal offense. It may also be used to refer to criminal offences or civil wrongs that include conduct which some people consider to be stalking, such as those described in law as "harassment" or similar terms.

There is spurned partner stalking. Cyber stalking. Paparazzi stalking.  

There is also medical record stalking by offshore employers seeking to deny Jones Act compensation to workers hurt on the job.

This has nothing to do with whether or not the company insurance investigators have the legal right to access medical records. Under the law, they do.

But there is a distinction between what is a reasonable due diligence search and character assassination. Many employers will stop at nothing to make a legitimately disabled worker look like a criminal instead of a victim. They will use any means necessary to discredit the victim, even drawing attention to a substance abuse problem that was successfully treated years before the accident and which had absolutely nothing to do with the matter at hand.

In a recent Jones Act case involving an injured worker subcontracted to Washington State Ferries, investigators hunted down the woman's medical records over a 16 year period between 1992 and 2008. 104 pieces of evidence were dug up against her, including visits to her doctor, chiropractor, orthopedist, surgery center, hospitals, imaging center, sleep disorder center, to name a few.

Employers try to gather as much documentation against injured workers in the hope that the higher the stack of paperwork, the greater the perception of wrongdoing, or preponderance of evidence.