Dallas Non-Subscriber Attorney

Dallas Non-Subscriber Work Injury Attorney Michael Grossman on Understanding Workers' Compensation, Non-Subscriber Compensation and Your Legal Options

If you’ve recently been hurt on the job, it is important that you seek the help of an experienced Dallas legal professional who can assist you in seeking compensation for your work-related injuries. Without an experienced work-related personal injury lawyer, you have virtually no hope of receiving the fair compensation you deserve.

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Work injury cases can be some of the most complex in the legal world. The precise approach in handling your case depends on a large number of variables, but the most important point is first learning the truth of whether or not your employer subscribes to workers’ compensation. If your employer does subscribe, the employer is protected from further litigation and all you can do is file a claim through the workers’ comp program. However, a lot of Texas employers may tell you they have workers’ comp, when they are, in truth, non-subscribers. Whether or not your employer is a workers’ comp subscriber, you still may be able to bring civil action against liable third parties.

So, if you want to receive every compensation dollar you deserve from a workplace injury, regardless of whether workers’ comp covers your employer or not, you must get help from an experienced attorney. Dallas non subscriber attorney Michael Grossman from Grossman Law Offices helps you protect your rights as a worker so that you can seek a fair settlement.

What is Workers’ Compensation and Why Does it Prevent me From Filing a Lawsuit?

Think of workers’ compensation as state-sponsored group insurance. It is nothing like an individual insurance policy. Due to intense pressure by the insurance industry and their lobbyists, the legislature created and modified workers’ compensation. Today, workers comp is a complicated government bureaucracy. It protects employers from lawsuits and generally disregards the legal rights of employees to be fairly compensated when the employer is truly negligent. Workers’ compensation benefits come out of a “pool” of funds that are provided by private insurance carriers. In Texas, employers may elect not to subscribe to workers’ compensation insurance.

Employers who participate in workers’ comp fund this insurance pool through the premiums they pay to the participating insurance companies, who then provide “umbrella insurance coverage” to the workers of the participating employers. Today, around half of Texas’ businesses participate in the state’s workers’ compensation program and are virtually bulletproof when it comes to civil actions being filed against them for workplace injuries, barring a few often rare exceptions.

On the other hand, many, but not all, non-subscribers to the program carry some form of liability insurance for their workplaces or set aside a portion of their profits to cover their workers in the event of an accident. If you are injured on-the-job and your employer is a workers’ comp non-subscriber, you have every right to seek damages in court for your injuries, lost wages and other reimbursement through a civil action. However, seeking such legal action can be challenging, especially without the help of an experienced Dallas non subscriber attorney.

Workers’ compensation insurance provides some token benefit to injured employees. If your employer subscribes to workers’ comp and you are injured on the job, you will receive some reimbursement. It doesn’t matter how the accident occurred or whose fault it was, but many times the amount of money you receive doesn’t cover the actual expenses of an on the job injury. Since you cannot file a lawsuit against your workers’ comp-covered employer, but still need payment for your injuries, we can help you identify all liable third parties from which you can receive a more equitable settlement, in addition to your workers’ comp claim.

For example, if you are hurt at a construction site and your employer’s workers’ comp covers your injury claim, you can’t file a lawsuit, but many construction site injuries are often the fault of at least one third-party and maybe more. Let’s say you are hurt in a scaffolding collapse and the equipment belongs to a subcontractor who didn’t properly assemble it. The subcontractor is liable. The company that manufactured the scaffolding might also be liable if your injuries are due to a defect in the equipment and you can likely file a product liability claim against the scaffold’s manufacturer. Even if you cannot file a lawsuit against your workers’ comp-covered employer, you may have non-subscriber options that allow you to seek fair compensation for your job-related injuries over-and-above a workers’ comp claim. Our Dallas work accident injury attorneys will help you identify all likely defendants in your case.

Don’t forget that your employer may claim to have workers’ comp when he or she in fact does not. Employers may even try to quickly pay you benefits you would receive from workers’ compensation insurance and ask you to sign what they may represent as a “standard release” in order to further their deception. We will thoroughly investigate your employer and determine whether or not they have workers’ comp coverage. If your employer doesn’t, you may have a very strong claim and we can help you file a powerful non-subscriber lawsuit.

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Is the Money Paid by a Workers Compensation Claim Really That Bad?

To us, workers’ comp payouts for serious injuries can be described in one word: Disgraceful.

If you are the victim of a job-related accident and your employer has workers’ comp, you will receive no better than 70% of your lost income, but there is a $600 weekly cap. So, if you are a carpenter and earn $70,000 a year and suffer a job-related injury, your employer’s workers’ comp coverage pays a measly $600 per week in lost wages as you recover from your injuries until you return to work. With such little compensation, hopefully you’ll recover quickly.

There is another glaring danger to employees who are awarded workers’ comp claims. The amount you receive does not take into account the true value of lost future potential income. If you suffer long-term disability and cannot return to work, you still are only entitled to that same $600 workers’ comp amount per week for the rest of your life, through you previously earned about $1400 every week as a carpenter. Now you may receive an additional disability lump sum, but a workers’ comp’s disability payment is insignificant compared to your total lost future income.

For some, it gets even worse. Let’s say you’re an employee at a warehouse in the evenings while you work your way through graduate school to become a CPA during the day. You suffer a serious spinal injury on the job, and are physically unable to work or even continue your education. You still receive the same 70% of only your warehouse salary for the rest of your life. And since healthy CPA’s often earn ten times that of a warehouse worker (which is isn’t much more than minimum wage) you lose a huge amount of potential income, probably over seven figures, from the many years you would have earned that huge accountant salary. This poses disastrous consequences for you and your family. Lost future earnings is where the insurance companies that contribute to the workers’ comp coverage pool make a killing at worker-expense because they are immune to fairly compensating you for lost future earnings.

Is it any wonder why you must have an experienced workplace injury attorney who can effectively investigate your case and represent you? If your employer does not have workers’ comp, you must know so that you can recover a fair settlement for your injuries. And if your employer does have workers’ compensation, you and your attorney must immediately begin the search for every third party who’s liable for the injuries you have suffered at work, and aggressively pursue all legitimate claims against them. Our workplace injury lawyers build strong cases. And we tirelessly fight for your right to win the fairest compensation you deserve.

How Do Non-Subscriber Lawsuits Work to Fairly Compensate Me?

In non-subscriber injuries, you have a right to file a traditional personal injury lawsuit against your employer to compensate you for a variety of damages. They may include:

• The income you lost for the time your injury prevented you from working.
• Your diminished earning capacity if there is long-term disability.
• All of your medical expenses.
• Property damage.
• Your physical pain and suffering.
• Mental or emotional distress that you suffer due to your injuries.

With the help of their experienced attorneys and insurance companies (if they are insured) liable employers try to frustrate an injured employee’s claims by alleging that you and only you, the employee, are responsible for your workplace injury. You and your attorney must disprove those allegations and turn spotlight to where it truly belongs, your employer.

If you suffer a lifting injury at work, your employer might claim that since you were working alone at the time and there are no witnesses, your injury is your fault. But, if our attorneys can connect the responsibility for your injury back to your employer, it’s much easier to prove negligence and the odds of winning your case get much better.

One way to prove employer negligence finds your attorney proving your employer’s inability or refusal to give you proper safety training or the right safety equipment. An investigation might reveal that your boss didn’t tell another employee to help you lift an obviously heavy object and caused your injury. There are several other ways a skilled attorney can turn the tables on your employer and prove negligence as the cause of your on-the-job injury, not you.

Proving employer liability for an injury usually calls for intricate tactics so a jury understands the more discrete standards of legal liability. Our experienced attorneys are thoroughly familiar with non-subscriber work injury law, know how to prove your injuries were caused by your employer’s negligence and lay the real blame for them at your employer’s feet. The Dallas injury attorneys at Grossman Law Offices effectively help you prove your case and win the fair compensation you need in non-subscriber injury cases from your employer and any liable third-parties who contribute to your on-the-job accident.

Work Injury Lawsuits and the Employer-Employee Relationship

Many employers mistakenly believe that hiring contractors allows them to escape liability in work injury cases. This is because Texas work injury law states that only “traditional” employees are eligible to file work injury lawsuits, not contractors. But Texas law does not provide clear guidelines for determining employee status for the purposes of civil liability. This means an attorney must rely on previous rulings to determine whether a worker is an employee or contractor. In Texas, the sum of current "case law" is very clear. "In terms of civil liability, an employer-employee relationship is determined by the actual working relationship between employer and employee, not by a contract."

Numerous conditions can establish an employer-employee relationship. The most straightforward is a contract that clearly states you are an employee. Another clear-cut example is if a worker is performing services particular to an employer’s business. For instance, if a person works at Walmart, wears a Walmart shirt and badge, and serves Walmart customers, that person is a Walmart employee, regardless of the presence or absence of any sort of contract.

Over the past ten years, the line between who is “technically” an employee and who is not has become very confusing and, in some cases, very murky. Sometimes you, or your employer, might think you are an employee when you are, in truth, not. Many employers make the mistake of believing that by hiring contractors, they can automatically escape liability in work injury cases. And other non-subscriber employers may know full-well that you’re an employee, but purposely mislead you into thinking you are a contractor.

Regardless of whether it’s an honest mistake or the result of employer deception, Texas work injury law specifically states that "only general employees are eligible to file work injury lawsuits, not contractors."

• A person works for many different clients: if an electrician works for many different clients on different projects, that electrician is a contractor. If the electrician works for a phone company and only that company, the electrician is an employee.
• The worker must provide his or her own tools: if a worker is responsible for providing his or her own tools and equipment, that worker is a contractor. If the worker’s employer provides the tools and equipment, the worker is an employee.
• The worker’s particular project is examined at various steps of completion: if a worker’s employer examines the worker’s project at various stages of completion, the worker is an employee. If the employer only looks at the finished product, the worker is a contractor.
• The worker determines how much time is spent on each project: if the worker can devote as much or as little time as he or she wants to a particular project, the worker is a contractor. If the amount of time devoted to a project is determined by the employer, the worker is an employee.
• The worker is paid on completion of a particular project: if the worker is only paid when a project is completed, the worker is a contractor. If the worker is paid by the hour or by a yearly salary, the worker is an employee.

In cases where a worker is borrowed from another agency, the rules for determining the working relationship are similar, but there are some important differences. The relevant conditions include:

• The borrowed worker’s employer has the right to hire or fire: if the borrowing employer can hire or fire the borrowed worker at any time, the worker is an employee.
• The borrowing employer had the right to select a particular worker: if the borrowing employer could select a particular worker, then the worker is an employee. If the agency lending the worker could send any worker they wanted, the worker is a contractor.
• The borrowed worker is responsible for providing his or her own tools: if the worker must provide his or her own tools or equipment, the worker is a contractor. If the employer provides the tools, the worker is an employee.
• The agency lending the worker can substitute another worker at any time: if the lending agency can substitute the borrowed worker for another worker at will, then the worker is a contractor. If the lending agency does not have this right, then the worker is an employee.
• The borrowing employer is borrowing the worker for an unspecified length of time: if the worker is borrowed for an indefinite time, then the worker is an employee. If the worker is borrowed for a specific project with a set date of completion, the worker is a contractor.
• The borrowed worker is borrowed because of a particular skill set: if, for example, a boat manufacturing company borrows a composite materials expert from a surfboard manufacturer, then the worker is a contractor. If, however, an employer borrows a worker to fill a position that virtually anyone could fill, then the worker is an employee.
• The borrowing employer assumes responsibility for paying the worker’s income tax and social security: if the borrowing employer must pay the worker’s social security and income tax benefits, then the worker is an employee. If the borrowing employer does not have this responsibility, then the worker is a contractor.

Why Should I Fear my Opponents In a Workplace Injury Case?

In all non-subscriber and third party injury claims or cases, the defendants often have large insurance companies with gifted attorneys to dispute your compensation claims. At other times, your employer is either “self-insured” or uninsured. They will fight just as hard, and are capable of underhanded and sometimes vile tactics to avoid paying for your workplace injuries.

Non-subscribers who are represented by insurance companies use complicated delaying tactics and dispute you at every turn. Their attorneys are usually either in-house, or on-retainer. They are very good at defending insurance companies from people like you every day. Insurance companies are in the business of collecting high premiums and stubbornly avoid paying reasonable claims. They make you prove every little point of your case, file “nuisance motions” and until, of if, they are persuaded that you and your attorney have a strong case, they won’t give up. But they don’t always win, especially when you have a legal partner who knows every trick they pull, and how to counter it.

But as bad as insurance companies can be in an injury claim or lawsuit, employers who are liable for workplace injuries and are self-insured, or have no insurance altogether, are the most shameful. The shocking tactics we’ve seen some of them use in defending themselves against legitimate civil actions are disgraceful and sometimes, downright illegal.

Together, we will seek a settlement through an officer of the company or maybe even directly from your employer if it is a small company. This person’s salary is tied directly to the company’s profits. Any amount paid to you for an injury comes directly out company coffers. So by compensating you, your employer literally takes money out his own pocket. We are rarely surprised when a self-insured company officer uses any and all means for denying your claim in order to protect his company, and personal, assets. Often, their lawyers turn a blind eye to such shameful behavior and will claim ignorance to their clients’ devious actions.

Self-insured companies can sometimes deliberately dispose of damning evidence, bribe witnesses, and even intimidate you. They sometimes resort to physical threats to you and your family. Over the years we’ve seen hundreds of tricks self-insured defendants use against our clients. And it’s the reason why, when we represent a client against a self-insured company, the first thing we often do is to file motions that prevent anyone with the company from behaving inappropriately against our clients. Sometimes a motion includes demands that they make no attempt whatsoever to communicate with our client unless one of our attorneys is present.

We will not be intimidated. And we will not allow our clients to be intimidated as they pursue justice for the work injuries they suffer. It’s their right to be fairly compensated. And it is our mission to protect them.

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An Experienced Dallas Non Subscriber Attorney Can Help You Seek Fair Compensation

We’ve given you a lot to think about, and you still probably have questions about the legal reimbursement avenues available if you have suffered a workplace injury that is significant enough to justify legal action. However, that’s our point in sharing the many nuances of Texas workers’ comp law, and employer liability due to on-the-job injuries. Many things can, and do, happen that affect your ability to be fully and fairly compensated for your workplace injury.

Grossman Law Offices can help you seek fair reimbursement for being hurt on the job through no fault of your own. If your employer has workers’ comp, we will help you identify, then seek additional damages from every other liable party. If your employer does not have workers’ compensation, we help you build the strongest non-subscriber lawsuit possible and counter the arguments and underhanded tactics that are used time and again by non-subscriber employers and the defense lawyers who help them avoid liability. We immediately and thoroughly investigate your employer to clearly establish whether or not he or she subscribes to workers’ comp, and plan an effective strategy once we know.

But for your sake, please keep this very important piece of "free advice" in mind: Before you speak with an insurance company, or accept even a single dollar of payment or compensation from your employer, or sign anything, or attempt to file a lawsuit on your own, you must contact a competent lawyer. If you reach out to us for a free consultation, we will quickly tell you what your legal options are and how we can help you recover the appropriate compensation for your work-related injury.

The workplace injury attorneys at Grossman Law Offices in Dallas regularly win fair and just compensation for injured workers who were refused assistance by other firms. Not long ago, we successfully handled a case for a worker who was injured on the job, but had initially signed-on to his job as an independent contractor. Eight different law firms said he had no case because the company that hired him used contract workers. But we weren’t convinced and ultimately, our firm won a seven-figure settlement for this injured, and very grateful, employee, because we successfully established a clear employer-employee relationship.

Our professional workplace accident attorneys at Grossman Law Offices have helped injured workers win the compensation they deserve for over 20 years. We have successfully investigated and resolved hundreds of work injury cases in our clients’ favor. We have faced-down virtually every major insurance carrier and work injury defense firm in the country. These corporations know how successful our attorneys are, and that’s why most of the time they offer our clients sizable and fair settlements once they know we’re on the case because they don’t want to face us in court.

The best ending for your workplace injury produces a fair settlement without having to go to trial. But, if a trial becomes necessary, Dallas non subscriber attorney Michael Grossman will work to persuasively argue your case so you can get back on your feet and resume a normal life.

If you or someone you love has been hurt on the job, the Dallas work injury lawyers of Grossman Law Offices can help you recover the compensation you need and deserve, and bring those responsible for your work injuries to justice. The first step is for you to contact us at 1-855-326-0000 (toll free), send us an email, or fill out the form at the top of this page for a free consultation to find out every legal option that is available to you and keep you from incurring further financial loss due to your Dallas workplace injury accident.

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