When Do You Need A Workers Comp Lawyer?
Brian O Sutter
Personal Injury
For people who work at a good job, with good people and, most important of all, good, fair management, there’s not much to worry about. Even if you should get into an accident at your line of work, whether that’s in a factory, or in an office, a fair-minded, employee-centric place of work will do right by you and try to make sure things are fair. It’s when a work situation is not as ideal as what’s described above that you need a workers’ compensation attorney to handle your workers comp case. So how do you know when you need a lawyer and when you’ll be fine on your own?
Here’s a few quick things to keep an eye out for.
You Don’t Need A Lawyer If:
It’s minor. If you just had a small cut, or you sprained a muscle, odds are this is not big enough that your employer would even have an issue with the medical treatment.
You have no pre-existing conditions. This is becoming something of a hot button topic since there’s so much uncertainty in America right now about what will happen with regards to medical treatment and pre-existing conditions. But if you have none, to begin with, then there will be no complicated issues, as there might be with someone that has asthma, for example.
Your employer admits it happened. If your employer is already aware and freely acknowledging the fact that your injury did take place at work, then this is the biggest legal hurdle that you no longer have to worry about. Usually one of the biggest challenges in a workers comp case is contesting the assertion from your employer that the injury didn’t happen on the job. An employer tacitly admitting this, on record, removes a major obstacle.
You May Need A Lawyer If:
There’s a third-party involved. If you get injured on the job, but it’s not a direct result of the job, such as if you get hit by a delivery driver bringing something to your workplace, this complicates matters considerably, and there may be more at stake financially than what you would get from workers comp.
Your employers punish you. Filing for workers compensation may not sit well with less scrupulous employers. You may suddenly find yourself with fewer working hours, hit with a pay cut, or you may even simply be terminated from your job. Seek a lawyer immediately if these things are happening.
You are paying something out of pocket. The workers comp you receive may not be enough to cover all your medical expenses or lost wages, meaning you’re losing something from your own finances in the process. Seek the help of a lawyer to ensure that you’re not getting cheated by employers who are hoping to minimize their losses by hoping you’ll accept reduced compensation.
In a perfect world, if you injure yourself on the job, your management will understand and appreciate what you’ve gone through. They will adequately provide you and your family for an unfortunate incident that took place while you were working in good faith. If that doesn’t happen, a workers comp lawyer can help fix the situation.