When someone one is injured due to the fault of a 3rd party they have a personal injury case against that person or entity. Traditional negligence theories form the basis of the claim and one can collect compensatory damages, which include pain and suffering and emotional distress, as well as punitive damages in some cases to punish the wrongdoer.
When a worker suffers an injury while on the job, they have a workers compensation case. As such, employers provide workers compensation insurance to protect their employees who become injured while at work. The only requirement for a workers compensation case is a work related injury. The question of fault does not matter, as the concept of negligence does not enter into the picture. A worker injured while on the job is entitled to, among other things,
payment of all related medical bills
disability payments while unable to work
a fair settlement if the injury leads to permanent disability
In workers compensation cases, one cannot collect the traditional damages associated with other types of personal injury cases such as emotional distress, or, pain and suffering.
On occasion a single event can form the basis of a case that is a combination of workers comp and personal injury. If an individual is on the job and is injured due to the negligence of a third party, a person or entity other than their employer, then the injury victim has a case that is both types of cases. The workers compensation case involves their employer, since they were injured on the job. The personal injury case is then against the negligent third party that caused the injury. Frequently, the situation where this type of combination case occurs involves car accidents. The worker is on the job and then is hurt in a car accident caused by an unrelated third party. It can also arise in other situations including work injuries caused by defective or unsafe products.
A number of rules apply to workers compensation and personal injury combination cases. The most significant rule applies to the amounts paid out by the workers comp. insurance carrier including medical bills, disability payments, etc. These bills are all reimbursable from the proceeds of the third party personal injury case. This is an important factor to take into account in order to determine the feasibility from an economic standpoint of asserting both cases. An experienced personal injury attorney will be able to assess the merits of asserting these workers compensation personal injury cases
Whenever a person is injured on the job an evaluation of the potential of a personal injury case should be made in addition to the obvious work related injury case. Once again, an experienced personal injury lawyer sees these situations all the time as is expert in assessing such a situation.
No comments:
Post a Comment