As anyone who has suffered an on-the-job injury will tell you, following a workplace accident, you need all the help you can get and then some. In Texas, due to laws that give employers the option to subscribe to workers’ compensation insurance, you could very well be left without the benefit of workers’ comp. The last thing you and your family need to be dealing with after suffering a catastrophic injury, such as a serious back injury or brain injury, or losing a loved one as the result of a fatal on-the-job accident, are the financial concerns that workers’ comp benefits would normally cover.
Work injury lawyer Mike Love has great compassion for people who were hurt on the job and families who lost loved ones due to fatal accidents. At Mike Love & Associates, LLC, we are dedicated to making sure that injured workers and their families in our East Texas community and throughout the state have a trusted and experienced personal injury law firm to help them with their legal needs.
Even if an employer or co-worker is at fault for an employee’s on-the-job injuries, the injured worker or his or her family may not be able to collect workers’ comp benefits. However, there are other options for employees who suffer work injuries due to an employer or co-worker’s negligence.
Employers in Texas are not required to subscribe to workers’ compensation insurance in many cases. Therefore, employees hurt on the job who work for companies that do not provide workers’ comp benefits (known as non-subscribers) generally must pursue other options to secure the help they need following their injury.
Employees injured because of someone else’s negligence may be able to file a third-party claim against the company or person responsible for causing the injury.
Third-party claims involve being hurt by a person who is not your employer or coworker. You can file a third-party claim if you have worker’s comp or if your employer is a non-subscriber. These often involve construction accidents where a worker was injured due to the negligence of a subcontractor or defective product. Other typical third party claims would be if a person was driving for work and was hit by another driver.
If a worker was hurt on the job while working for a non-subscriber and it was due to the negligence of a coworker or his or her employer, then the worker may be able to pursue a personal injury lawsuit against the employer.
The benefit of filing a personal injury lawsuit is that workers can potentially recover more through a personal injury case than they would have through a workers’ compensation claim. Workers’ comp only pays a portion of lost income and only those medical bills approved by the workers’ comp insurance carrier. In personal injury lawsuits, a person can receive the full amount of lost income and payment of past and future medical bills, as well as money to compensate for pain and suffering.
If you are hurt on the job due to someone else’s negligence, including your employer, a co-worker or anyone else, you have options available to hold those at fault accountable. The on-the-job injury attorneys at Mike Love & Associates, LLC can help you pursue a non-subscriber claim or third party claim if workers’ comp is not available. Our law firm has years of experience successfully fighting for the rights of injured workers and their families throughout Texas.
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