Corpus Christi Work Injury Lawyer

Workplace Personal Injury Lawyer Michael Grossman Explains what to do After a Work Related Injury

• The Effect of Workers’ Compensation Insurance
• Can I Sue if my Employer has Workers Comp
• My Employer Does not Have Workers’ Comp Insurance
• Are You an Employee, or Something Else?
• OSHA Can’t Help Your Case

Work injuries are a common occurrence in Corpus Christi, and can occur in virtually every occupation. Whether you’ve had a minor accident resulting in missing a few days of work, or a major accident leaving you permanently disabled, the law may provide for recovery. Knowing your rights is important and can often make the difference between receiving significant compensation and receiving nothing.

But what are your rights after you’ve been injured in an accident at work? This question isn’t always easy to answer, especially for non-lawyers or inexperienced attorneys. In recent years, workers’ compensation law has undergone many changes, making it much more complex. Depending on your unique situation, you may be able to sue your employer for medical expenses, lost wages, loss of earning capacity, and pain and suffering. Or, you may not be able to sue your employer for anything, even though you’ve been legitimately injured at work. An experienced Corpus Christi work injury lawyer can tell you what your options are. In this article, we’ll go over some of the factors that play a role in determining whether or not you can sue your employer, and what your options are if you discover that you can’t.

Does Your Employer Have Workers’ Compensation Insurance?

This is the first question that any Corpus Christi work injury lawyer will ask. In the Workers’ Compensation Act of 1993, the legislature gave employers an option. They may either purchase workers’ compensation insurance, or elect not to. Employers that choose to carry insurance are called subscribers. Those that choose not to carry insurance are called non-subscribers.

Finding out whether or not your employer has workers’ compensation insurance may be harder than you think, and in some cases you may need a Corpus Christi work injury lawyer to help you get to the bottom of things. Often, when you ask your supervisor or even your supervisor’s boss whether the company carries insurance, you’ll get the wrong answer. Usually, this is the result of mere ignorance. Many supervisors don’t know whether the company is insured or not. Alternatively, they may know whether or not the company is insured, but they may not understand the details of the insurance policy and claims process well enough to truly be of assistance.

In other instances, you will ask whether the employer is insured and be told a downright lie. As you’ll read, employers get special incentives for carrying workers’ compensation insurance. Many choose not to carry insurance because it can be expensive, especially if your workplace is hazardous. After you’re hurt, an employer that didn’t purchase insurance has a financial incentive to lie to you, and pretend that it is insured. The employer may pay your claim out of its own pocket in the same amount you would have received if it really were insured. This charade is never to your advantage. If your employer didn’t buy insurance, you’re probably entitled to recover MUCH more money than you could get from workers’ compensation insurance. That’s why it’s so important to hire a Corpus Christi work injury lawyer if your employer tells you that the company is uninsured.

The Effect of Buying Workers’ Compensation Insurance

As you’ve probably gathered, employers have a huge incentive to purchase workers’ compensation insurance. The law benefits subscribed employers by protecting them from lawsuits. That means that if your employer bought workers’ compensation insurance you can almost never sue your employer for your injury. Usually, your only recourse is through the administrative side of workers' compensation insurance.

The law creates limits on the amount of money that you can recover from the insurance company for your injury. If your employer had workers’ compensation insurance, you may be entitled to receive:

• Up to 70% of wages you lost while you were unable to work because you were recovering from your accident, with a maximum of $600 per week. If you’ve been permanently disabled and you are unable to work for the rest of your life, you may be entitled to receive these benefits perpetually.
• Reimbursement for your travel expenses if you drove to receive medical treatment, medical supplies, and prescriptions.
• Complete reimbursement for the costs of medical treatment, prescription and over the counter drugs, and other medical supplies you needed to recover from your injury.

It’s safe to say that an insurance company will rarely be enthusiastic about paying a claim. In almost every case, the insurance company is looking out for its bottom line, and not for your health. The insurance company may deny your Corpus Christi workers’ compensation claim, or offer you as little money as possible. If the insurance company contests your claim, you will have to prove what you are entitled to in a special workers’ compensation court if you want to recover. To make sure you’re receiving all the money you’re owed from the insurance company, call Grossman Law Offices to speak with an experienced Corpus Christi work injury lawyer today.

Can’t I Sue Anyone if my Employer has Insurance?

If your employer has insurance, you may find that the amount you receive from the insurance company is not enough to make up for your true financial losses. As we’ve discussed, however, suing your employer in these cases is almost never an option. In many instances, you can sue third parties who were also at fault for your accident. For example, suppose a shelf in a store breaks, and merchandise falls on a clerk who works at the store. The employer may be liable for causing an unsafe working condition, but is protected from lawsuits by insurance. The manufacturer of the shelf may be liable for the accident as well if the shelf was defective. Additionally, a contractor who didn’t fasten the shelf well enough when he installed it may be responsible, as may another employee who overstocked the shelf with heavy products. The clerk cannot sue his employer, but may be able to sue any combination of the other responsible parties. At Grossman Law Offices, our experienced Corpus Christi work injury lawyers investigate the cause of every accident. We’ll discover who all the parties responsible for your accident are, and file lawsuits against all of them.

Even if an employer has workers’ compensation, he can be sued for on the job injuries in one special situation. The loved ones of a worker who dies in a fatal Corpus Christi work accident may sue the employer if the employer was grossly negligent.

What if Your Employer Does not Have Workers’ Compensation Insurance?

If your employer is a nonsubscriber, your case looks completely different. While the law smiles on employers that have chosen to buy insurance, it punishes those that have not. Employers who have not purchased workers’ compensation insurance can be sued without limit to the amount of damages. Lawsuits against nonsubscribers are filed in regular court, not in the bureaucratic workers’ compensation courts in which the work injury subscriber claims are handled.

Just because these claims are not subject to the red tape of workers’ compensation doesn’t mean that the process of recovering your damages will be easy. If your claim cannot be settled out of court, you’ll need to file a lawsuit. In that lawsuit, you’ll need to prove that your employer was negligent and that this negligence caused your accident. You’ll further have to prove your damages. You’ll have to provide evidence showing what your medical bills were, how much lost wages you had, how severe your loss of earning capacity is, and what your pain and suffering is worth. Missing evidence on any one of these points could result in recovering nothing.

You should additionally be aware of a defense that almost all employers use in nonsubscriber cases. Nonsubscribers have only one defense available to them—the sole proximate cause defense. Because they don’t have any others, they tend to use this defense in every case. Under the sole proximate cause defense, an employer can get off the hook for your injuries if it can prove that the injury was entirely your fault. Your employer will go about collecting evidence about you and your work habits, and will bring this evidence to court to demonstrate that you are a careless and sloppy worker and that your own gross negligence caused your injury on the day of the accident. Our Corpus Christi work injury lawyers have seen this defense in action hundreds of times. We know what to expect, and we’ll be able to warn you about what’s coming. We’ll gather our own evidence to prove that you weren’t the entire cause of your accident, and that your employer is at least in part to blame.

Even Non-subscribers Have Some Type of Insurance

Even if your employer chose not to purchase expensive workers’ compensation insurance, it may have some type of insurance that would be partially responsible if your employer lost its case to you. As a result, frequently the employer will have its insurance company and its insurance company’s lawyers on its side during a lawsuit. That means your opposition will be a very sophisticate group of specialized defense attorneys and insurance adjusters. These adjusters aren’t the friendly folks who handle your fender bender claims on your car insurance. When a high dollar policy is at stake, insurance companies use their most experienced, most aggressive people to defend their case. You should have someone experienced on your side too. Our Corpus Christi attorneys have dedicated the last twenty years to winning cases against almost every major insurance company in the United States. We know all the insurance company’s tricks, and we’ll make sure that they don’t work on you.

Are You an Employee, or Something Else?

On its face, Texas law says that employers don’t need to make the workplace safe for contractors, volunteers, and temporary workers. Many employers think that this means that if they hire these types of workers, they’ll never be liable for injuries that happen on the job. This belief is false, but it might surprise you to learn that many attorneys don’t know the truth either! Often, contractors and temporary workers come to our firm after another firm has told them that they don’t have a case. Because of our twenty years of experience, we can recognize when a client might be able to recover regardless of what kind of worker he was hired as.

The key to being able to sue your employer or collect workers’ compensation is not the job title you were given when you were hired, but rather the conditions you’ve worked in since then. The conditions of your job may enable our attorneys to prove that an employer-employee relationship existed between you and the person or entity that hired you. If you weren’t hired as an employee, proving this relationship is critical to your case against the person you worked for. We look to several factors that the law says can establish this employer-employee relationship:

• The person or entity you worked for withheld taxes and social security from your check
• The person or entity you worked for provided the tools and materials you needed to do your job
• The person or entity you worked for set your work schedule
• The person or entity you worked for supervised, directed, and inspected you as you worked
• You were hired for an indefinite period of time rather than to complete a specific task
• You were paid by the hour instead of by the project
• You signed a document, like conditions of employment, which limited your legal rights

If one or more of the above factors apply to you, you may be able to establish an employer-employee relationship which will allow you to recover from your employer. This may be the true even though you weren’t hired as an “employee” and even though other lawyers have told you that you have no case.

OSHA Can’t Help Your Case

Many of our clients wonder how and when OSHA is going to help them win their case against their employer. The truth is that OSHA cannot really help you with your claim. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, better known as OSHA, is a federal administration which creates and enforces workplace safety regulations. Though its purpose is admirable, OSHA is underfunded and understaffed. Frequently, OSHA investigators are unable to visit a work site until after an accident has happened. When they visit the work site, OSHA investigators produce a very vague and high-level report. The content of this report is not meant to prove the liability of the employer, and is almost never specific enough to be of any assistance in your claim. OSHA may fine your employer, but the fine is rarely more than a couple thousand dollars, and typically insufficient to truly see that justice is served. In short, OSHA serves a specific purpose, but that purpose has nothing to do with your claim. It has little power to see to it that you are compensated for your injuries. A Corpus Christi work injury lawyer is a much better resource for helping you get paid.

What Should I do Now?

After you’ve been injured in a Corpus Christi work related accident, there are a few things you should keep in mind. First, never sign a waiver of liability in exchange for a quick settlement. These settlements are rarely fair, but they are usually legally binding and can irreparably damage your case. Don’t write out a statement of how the accident happened for the employer either. Speak to an attorney before making any statement or accepting any settlement.

Second, if you need medical attention, don’t hesitate to receive it. We recognize that obstacles like missing work or not having health insurance may be standing in your way. But if you’ve been injured, seeking treatment is important to both your health and your case. If you’re concerned about the cost of medical care, call one of our lawyers for help. In most instances we can help you see a doctor, even if you didn’t think you could afford it.

Third, we recommend that you speak with an attorney right away. The longer you wait to pursue your claim, the more likely evidence you need for a strong case will disappear. The sooner our attorneys are on your case, the sooner we can go to your workplace and begin gathering evidence in a way that will make it admissible in court. After your accident, call an experienced Corpus Christi work injury lawyer from Grossman Law Offices. Reach us at 1-855-398-0000 (toll free). We’re standing by to give you a free consultation.