Construction Site Falls

Were You Hurt in a Fall at a Construction Site? You May Be Owed Compensation For Your Injury

We all know construction sites can be hazardous places, and one of the most common hazards facing even the most careful worker is on, around, or under construction scaffolding.

It doesn’t matter if the project is a two-story mansion, an industrial or retail building, a low-rise office or a towering skyscraper – scaffolding is necessary in the construction of most types of buildings. With all the building going on in Texas, there are likely as many scaffolds as there are construction workers.

You’re a conscientious worker. You do your best to stay safe at work and keep a safe work area, but that doesn’t mean you can’t fall victim to a workplace injury on, under or near scaffolding, or from a construction site fall. Accidents happen, and, in many cases you’re entitled to some form of reimbursement under Texas law for the financial losses you’ve incurred as a result. There may even be some other entitlement you have to compensation including your medical bills, the pain you’ve endured and your emotional distress. When your construction site fall injury is very serious, it can put a strain on your body, your finances and even your family.

This is the case whether you fell from scaffolding, or scaffolding collapsed on you, or scaffolding collapsed while you were on it. You’ve been injured and you need compensation. You are not without your rights. You may want to focus exclusively on your recovery, and that’s important, but you can’t take short cuts that could hurt your claims and your legal case further down the road. The laws have grown more complex regarding workers’ compensation in Texas and often there are parties that may talk a good game but they don’t have your best interests at heart. If this is you – if you’ve suffered an injury while working on a construction site by falling from scaffolding or some other height, having it collapse on you or collapse under you – you may consider seeking legal restitution to recover damages.

Personal injury suits involving construction companies are complicated and can be limited by the strictures of workers’ compensation laws in Texas. The best legal strategies for your case differ based on whether you are a subcontractor, contractor, or employee and whether or not the construction company subscribes to workers’ compensation insurance.

For instance, you should know that the laws that make non-subscribers liable for their employees’ injuries don’t apply directly to contractors. Often, construction companies think they can escape legal liability for injuries without even paying for workers’ compensation insurance by hiring contractors instead of employees. Unfortunately, this strategy often works for the companies, especially when they don’t have an experienced construction site fall personal injury and workers’ compensation attorney like scaffolding accident attorney Michael Grossman.

It sometimes appears that the laws surrounding workers’ compensation insurance and contractors work to allow companies to avoid all liability. Many personal injury firms will drop your case immediately upon hearing that you are not an employee. You see, while you may have heard about these factors – how a company being a workers’ comp subscriber makes them immune to lawsuits, or how by hiring contractors instead of employees an employer can’t be held liable for your injuries – they don’t always hold up when you have a team of experienced attorneys like the ones at Grossman Law Offices making your case.

Seek Medical Attention Immediately After Your Scaffolding Accident

If you’ve been hurt while on the job, the first thing you need to do is seek medical attention for yourself. Your health is of the utmost importance. Being examined by a medical professional is important both for your life and your case. If you need assistance seeking medical help that can take your personal and financial status into consideration, we have a large network of medical professionals that we can point you to. In addition, we may be able to help you see a doctor at no cost to you. We can even show you how the time you take off from work to get care may be compensable by the defendant. Once you have received proper medical attention, your next step involves seeking legal assistance in order to assess your employer’s workers comp status.

Assess Workers Comp Status

You need to know your employer’s status. It determines your legal options in regards to your own claim. An employers that has workers’ compensation insurance is called a subscriber, while if an employer does not have a policy, they are labeled a non-subscriber. The Texas Legislature enacted the Workers’ Compensation Act in 1992 and, according to that law, employers who choose to purchase workers’ compensation insurance get special incentives. These incentives usually are not incentives that work in your favor. The chief protection employers who pay for workers’ comp insurance has is that they cannot be sued under any but the most unusual of circumstances.

We want to know if your employer has workers’ compensation insurance. It makes a big difference in your case as to how we approach it if your employer has bought one of these insurance policies. It helps determine how your claim is filed and what compensation you may be entitled to receive. Workers’ comp in Texas is optional for employers, which is not the norm for a majority of states in the country.

The right answer about whether an employer is a subscriber or a non-subscriber to Texas workers’ comp law is not always forthcoming. Very often employees of a company don’t even know. Sometimes employers give the wrong answer when asked. Sometimes the answer to the question is not clear and sometimes the company doesn’t have a clear cut policy for dealing with accidents on the job.

Workers’ comp is an expensive program and some companies choose not to buy it, reasoning that they can save money as long as no one is injured, because the cost of workers’ comp for an employer is related to how risky the job is. However, there will often, rather inevitably, be accidents. As a workplace attorney with more than two decades of experience working scaffolding accident cases, Grossman Law Offices has encountered situations where companies have blatantly answered falsely when asked if they are a subscriber to Texas workers’ comp.

Seeking Legal Action Against Non-subscriber Companies

Non-subscribing companies have an almost unlimited liability to be sued while a subscriber employer is protected against lawsuits and the damages assessed against them are much more limited. By choosing to not be forthright about their workers comp status, a liable employer may lead an injured employee to think that he or she has little in the way of redress and that the employer has little in the way of liability.

The non-subscribing company may even try to pay an injured employee out of pocket or off the books, while saying that the money is actually coming from an insurer. This is certainly never in your best interest. They wouldn’t pay your out of pocket expenses if it was less expensive to pay you the damages to which you are entitled. Always keep this in mind: if you are injured or hurt and your employer doesn’t have insurance, you’re probably entitled to far more compensation than you would be receiving under an insurance policy. The hush money that your employer wants to offer is almost certainly a pittance compared to what the law would likely find in your favor.

The law really penalizes employers who choose not to purchase workers’ comp insurance coverage. These non-subscriber companies, unlike those who do have workers’ comp insurance, can be sued without limit by employees who have been injured on the job, and they can be sued in regular courts. With a non-subscriber as the defendant, there is no maze of red tape that you find with the bureaucracy often associated with the workers’ compensation system.

However, just because there’s no workers’ comp court red tape, that doesn’t mean it’s any easier to ensure your right to compensation. It’s a legal action like any other, and as with any legal action you will need professional representation. The non-subscriber employers will almost always contest your claims.

There are two special challenges that you need to anticipate in a lawsuit against a nonsubscriber. First, you should realize that even though they don’t carry workers’ compensation insurance, non-subscribers usually carry some form of insurance which will be responsible for paying at least part of your claim. Therefore, not only will your employer have an interest in defending against your claim, so will an insurance company. They’ll have a team of sophisticated lawyers and insurance adjusters ready to attack your case. The adjusters you’ll see in a lawsuit like yours aren’t the same adjusters who handle your fender-benders under your auto insurance. For high dollar cases like those involving workplace injuries, insurance companies usually use their best people. The adjusters who work on these injury cases are highly trained professionals who have gotten to their current positions by denying claims and saving their employers money.

They will have teams of attorneys who will try to pick apart your claims. They will contest your statements. They will do everything they can to make any accident look like you were the sole proximate cause, i.e. wholly responsible for the construction site accident. They will try to undermine any evidence you bring to prove the elements of your claim, since you have the burden of proof. This is even more complex than it sounds; you must show that your employer was at least partially responsible for the accident, that the employer’s negligence caused the injuries, and that you are entitled to a specific amount of damages as compensation for your injuries. It’s like a one strike and you’re out system most of the time: if you miss evidence on even one of these points, your claim could stand to be dismissed.

Seeking Legal Action Against Subscriber Companies

If you are an employee of a subscriber company, your ability to recover damages is limited due to the Texas Workers’ Compensation Act having established such limits on how much money you can recover from the insurance company.

Workers’ compensation does not include coverage or reimbursement for any pain, suffering, or even general damages, aside from the income and medical expenses specified. Up to 70% of wages you lost while you were absent from work while recovering from your work related injury, capped at a maximum of $600 per week, may be paid to you. This formula and maximum holds true even in the case that you’ve been permanently disabled and are unable to work for the rest of your life. In other words, you may have to make do with such paltry benefits for the rest of your life.

You are also entitled to complete reimbursement for all your medical costs, such as the costs of medical treatment, prescription and over the counter drugs, and other medical supplies you needed to recover from your injury. Ongoing treatment and medical needs are also potentially reimbursable. If you incur travel expenses in seeking medical treatment, supplies and prescriptions, those may likewise be recovered.

Is Working With the Workers’ Comp Process An Easy Process?

The short answer is that it is not always easy or quick. An insurance company is in business to make money. Insurance companies are usually more interested in helping themselves than helping you because you are not the one paying their premiums. You are a liability in their financial ledger. The less that is paid to you, the more they still have. Companies will very often contest your claims, as will the insurer. When a workers’ comp claim is challenged, there’s a special workers’ compensation court established to hear these cases, and you have to prove your case. It’s a complex, bureaucratic process fraught with hazards, and if enough doubt is raised as to your case, your damages can be reduced by the court. The Dallas work accident attorneys at Grossman Law Offices have been winning workers’ compensation cases against insurance companies for the past twenty years, and that’s why we feel it’s critical for injured parties to have representation that’s experienced and working in your interest.

Do You Have Other Options in Dealing With a Subscriber Case for a Scaffolding Accident?

If your employer was not solely responsible for your injury, you can file a lawsuit against other parties who are responsible for your injury. For any accident, there is often more than one party, person or entity to blame. And here’s the kicker – multiple parties can be sued for the exact same injury. Even though the law says that you cannot sue your employer, you may be able to sue others who contributed to the scaffolding accident.

Scaffolding is often put up by an outside contractor. There may have been negligence in setting it up correctly. It may have been faulty equipment. It may be that the manufacturer is at fault. It may not have been properly installed. It may not have been properly maintained. There may be third party owners of the equipment, and there may be issues with the landlord or the site security. Additionally, maybe the materials used to secure the scaffolding when it was installed were defective. If this is the case, the manufacturer of those materials may also be sued.

It’s important to investigate all of the elements that lead to the scaffolding accident, because it’s not right that someone else’s negligence, mistakes or sloppy work left you injured. The Dallas scaffolding accident attorneys at Grossman Law Offices are experienced and skilled in conducting thorough investigations into the cause of every accident. We can help identify each liable party so that appropriate claims can be brought against every responsible party.

My Case Seems Open and Shut. Why Do I Need Representation?

Your employer, other responsible parties, and the insurers have teams of adjustors and attorneys who want to make sure you are paid as little as possible. These attorneys and adjusters have a playbook of proven tactics for reducing what their employer has to pay an injured person. They train and study for years using tactics refined in court rooms every day. What they want to do is paint you, the injured party, as the sole proximate cause of your injury. That would mean that you and you alone caused the accident that injured you. If they can show that you and you alone were responsible for your accident, then they can be released from any and all liability. They will tear your case down to the brass tacks and look into every corner of your work history and working habits. Employers and insurance companies interview witnesses and past employers to try to get your co-workers to admit that you make careless mistakes at work. This inquest can be especially disheartening in the aftermath of a fatal scaffolding accident when a deceased victim’s work ethic is being questioned by a defense attorney. With experience in procuring proper evidence that can give voice to a decedent, the Dallas scaffolding accident law firm of Grossman Law Offices can help make sure that your side of the story, or your family member’s side of the story, is heard and understood.

Are you an Employee?

Employers are not obligated to protect contract workers, no matter what kind of scaffolding accident, or any other accident, happens on their watch. So many employers try to get around this by hiring people to work as employees, but they label them “contractors.” The law in Texas says that employers are not under any obligation to keep the workplace safe for contractors, volunteers, or temporary employees. In other words, a contractor is responsible for their own workplace safety. Employers believe that if they hire only these types of workers, they can cut corners on insurance costs and safety since they won’t be sued. Just because most contractors and temp workers won’t sue an employer because of this law doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

Just calling a worker a “contractor” doesn’t make them so. If you work like a full-time employee and are treated like one, you are one even if the company says you’re a contractor. Even though you were hired as a contractor or a temp worker, you may still be able to recover from your employer if you can show the existence of an employer-employee relationship in the sense that you work like and are treated like an employee.

If one of more of the following factors apply in your situation, you can sue a non-subscriber, or seek benefits through a workers’ comp claim from a subscriber, as if you were an employee. If the person or entity you worked for provided the tools, training and/or materials necessary for the work, withheld taxes and social security, or if there was a document or contract between you and the person/entity you work for that specified conditions of employment, which limited your legal rights. Furthermore, the establishment of an employer/employee relationship can be substantiated if your work was supervised, directed, and inspected as you worked, if there was a set work schedule, if you were hired for an indefinite period of time, rather than by the project or task, or if you were paid by the hour instead of by the project or task. Through these issues and more, we can help you determine whether the law considers you an employee or a contractor so that you might be able to seek just compensation for your injury.

Take Action: Contact Grossman Law Offices After a Scaffolding Construction Site Fall

Don’t accept a settlement from your employer or insurance company that waives those parties’ liability. These types of offers are rarely fair. Unfortunately, they are usually legally binding. If you sign one of these documents without a lawyer or accept fast cash from one of the defendants, there may be little we can do to salvage your legal rights. Don’t write out or sign any statement about your scaffolding accident until you’ve spoken to a lawyer.

We will perform an exhaustive investigation into your accident site in order to ensure that all liable parties are properly identified so that they can be held accountable for their role in causing you harm. We will seek and identify all liable parties to your scaffolding accident, which may prove beneficial in terms of ensuring that your compensation is commensurate with your incurred financial losses. By processing an accident scene correctly and working to ensure that all relevant evidence and testimony is gathered, we can build a strong case on your behalf. As time elapses after an accident, evidence tends to go missing. The sooner you hire one of our attorneys, the sooner we can get to the scene of the accident and start gathering the evidence you’ll need for a strong case. In addition to being required to prove you case, strong evidence is useful in compelling defendants to offer you a favorable settlement. Favorable settlement offers without the need for trial save you time and money.

We’re standing by to take your call. Call us at 1-855-326-0000 (toll-free) for a free consultation today.