Injuries at work can leave you with serious injuries that might make it impossible to work anymore. Even if your disability is only temporary and you can eventually go back to work, you could have faced exceptionally expensive medical bills and lost wages in the meantime.
Unfortunately, restrictions on your right to sue under Workers’ Compensation often keep you from being able to sue your employer, but other options might be available to get you the damages you need. Additionally, insurance often leaves out damages for pain and suffering, and going to court might be the only way to recover these damages.
For help with your case, contact the work injury lawyers at Legal Care New Jersey today at (732) 838-9769.
How to Get Full Damages for a Work Injury in Bayonne, NJ
After an injury, you might have been told that filing an insurance claim with your employer’s Workers’ Compensation policy is the only way to get the compensation you need for your injury. However, this insurance system covers only certain damages and often leaves you with no compensation for pain and suffering. Instead, our work injury lawyers might be able to help you file a lawsuit to maximize the compensation you receive and get you damages for your pain and suffering.
What Insurance Leaves Out
Insurance policies that pay injured workers for accidents on the job only cover work-related injuries. This means that any injuries during your commute and most injuries on break will not be covered. Our lawyers can help you still sue for these injuries.
Additionally, these policies pay for the cost of medical expenses to treat your injuries, but there might be restrictions on which doctors you can use, when and where you can get the treatment, and more. You can also get benefits for lost wages, but these benefits rarely cover 100% of your lost wages, leaving you with only a portion of the income you usually get. This practically makes it feel like you are paying for medical expenses anyway if a third of your paycheck simply disappears.
These policies also never cover pain and suffering damages. This means getting no compensation whatsoever for the emotional distress and other mental effects of your injury. Even the pain and discomfort itself will go unreimbursed if you rely on insurance.
What to Do Instead
If you file a lawsuit for your injuries, you can claim full damages instead. This means getting damages for your medical care, the wages you missed out on because of your injury, other economic expenses the accident caused you, and pain and suffering.
However, you must meet certain exceptions to be able to sue.
Who You Can Sue for a Work Injury in Bayonne, NJ
Suing an employer is often not allowed after an injury at work. However, there are some exceptions to this rule that still allow you to file a lawsuit against your boss. Moreover, there are other parties you could be entitled to sue.
Exceptions to Sue Your Employer for Work Injuries
Employers can be sued for intentional conduct that injures you. This means that things like assault by a superior can be redressed in court without the need to limit your damages to insurance payouts.
Additionally, anything that falls under the category of “intentional wrongs” can also be sued for. This is more expansive than covering assault alone and can cover things that the employer should have known were dangerous but intentionally elected to do anyway.
There is also a strange situation with independent contractors, where they are not technically covered by insurance, but the law tends to limit who qualifies as an “independent contractor” for these purposes. An independent contractor must be “properly classified” to qualify as a true independent contractor and retain the right to sue the client who hired them.
Determining whether someone is a contractor or not is a complex question and means investigating their employment structure, how much the “employer” controls their work, and whether they do the same kind of work that their client does. If the worker’s job is quite separate and they control their own work, then they might not count as an “employee,” and thus there is no “employer” they are barred from suing.
Talk to a lawyer about whether these or other exceptions apply to your case and permit you to sue your boss directly for your work injuries.
Suing Other Parties for Work Injuries
An injury at work is not necessarily caused by your employer. In some cases, the accident is merely a “freak accident,” and there is no one to sue. Other times, you might have been the one to cause the accident. Insurance allows you to still get compensation in these cases, but it blocks damages if you intentionally caused your own accident. However, when other parties are liable for the accident, nothing in the law blocks you from suing them.
These “third-party” defendants can often include customers, drivers, other contractors at your workplace, suppliers, vendors, and many other various parties and people. For example, a roadside construction worker hit by a car at work might be able to sue the driver. The same is true for a transportation worker, such as a bus driver. Other workers might get hurt because of defective safety gear, a dangerous condition in the commercial building that houses their office, or some other accident caused by someone unrelated to your employment.
Note that in these cases, you often cannot sue a coworker. A coworker is, for one, likely not going to be able to pay for your injuries any better than you would. Second, they might be considered an extension of your employer, so you might be unable to sue them.
Call Our Bayonne Workplace Injury Attorneys Today
Call (732) 838-9769 for a free case evaluation with Legal Care New Jersey’s work injury attorneys.
