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If you were recently injured while working in construction, you have rights that are time sensitive. Construction is an inherently dangerous industry to work in, and there are many ways you can be hurt—but there’s only one way to protect your rights from unscrupulous insurance companies and employers and that is to hire a construction accident law firm as soon as possible in the process.
Despite the laws designed to protect construction workers, they are often circumvented, and shortcuts in safety protocol cause a substantial number of serious injuries every year. As such, the victims of serious accidents in construction must understand the correct legal avenues for compensation and support. Insurance companies, corporate policies, and determinations of liability often complicate the intricacies of serious construction injuries. Employers may try to strongarm you into a quick settlement, or an insurance company might lock you into an early position that can hurt your case. This is why it’s important to hire a skilled construction accident lawyer.
Common Types of Construction Injuries
- Falls: Falls from heights, such as scaffolding, ladders, or rooftops, are one of the leading causes of injuries and fatalities in the construction industry.
- Struck-by Accidents: These occur when a worker is struck by a moving object, such as a vehicle, equipment, or falling debris.
- Caught-in/between Accidents: Workers can become caught in or between heavy machinery, equipment, or materials, leading to serious injuries or fatalities.
- Electrocutions: Contact with live electrical wires or faulty equipment can result in severe electrical burns, shocks, or electrocution.
- Slips, Trips, and Falls: In addition to falls from heights, workers can also be injured by slipping or tripping on uneven surfaces, debris, or slippery substances.
- Trenching and Excavation Accidents: Collapses or cave-ins of trenches and excavations can lead to burial injuries or fatalities.
- Overexertion: Musculoskeletal injuries can occur due to lifting heavy objects, repetitive motions, or working in awkward positions.
- Explosions and Fires: Accidents involving combustible materials, gas leaks, or faulty machinery can result in explosions or fires, causing serious injuries or fatalities.
- Equipment Malfunctions: Malfunctions or defects in construction equipment, such as cranes, forklifts, or power tools, can lead to accidents and injuries.
- Falling Objects: Objects or materials dropped or falling from heights can strike workers below, causing injuries.
- Scaffolding Accidents: When you’re up in high heights doing work, the employer generally needs to take extra special precautions to make sure you’re safe. In some states like New York, it could be strict liability against an employer for a scaffolding injury.
- Ladder Accidents: Rickety ladders lead to serious injuries and should be inspected often.
What To Do After a Construction Accident?
What you do immediately after a construction accident is critical for you or your loved ones’ health. Although this list is not meant to be comprehensive, these steps are vital to follow:
- Seek medical attention, regardless of how significant you may think your injury is, you may be under the stress of the event and not thinking clearly – if you were injured, seek medical attention right away. Head trauma can’t be just shaken off and can often go neglected and may lead to grave complications in the future. If you’re hurt, you need to make sure you’re fixed up first before doing anything else.
- Once medical attention is secured, you should speak with a construction accident lawyer to understand your rights and to help you with the next steps, such as how to report the information, what to preserve and whether law enforcement needs to be involved. Most construction accident lawyers only take cases on contingency, and they are there to protect your rights.
- After you’ve retained a construction accident lawyer, they will go over the right way to report the incident. It is important to adhere to the correct reporting protocol after an injury, as not doing so may hurt your case down the road. Proper procedure may include reporting it to the authorities and/or regulatory agencies, like OSHA or the local police, but these decisions should ultimately be made with your construction accident law firm.
- The next step your construction accident lawyer will do is to have you document everything, such as images of the accident location, your injuries, and the corporate reaction to your injury. By providing comprehensive records of how the injury occurred and was handled, it helps eliminate the company’s defenses or ambiguity of the situation. You must also preserve any and all information you have that’s relevant to your case, including, for example, the cell phone you used to take videos of the job site.
- Provide your construction accident attorney with the contact information and accounts of any relevant witnesses to the accident. Your attorney may also go over what other evidence you can obtain provided you have lawful access to it, such as company policies, or work logs.
The Importance of Construction Accident Attorneys
The aftermath of a severe construction accident inevitably involves dealing with insurance companies. Additionally, you may have multiple people that need to be put on notice of the accident, such as your employer, the owner of the job site, third-party contractors, or even the manufacturer of a product. Since there can be so many parties involved, it is advisable to hire a construction accident attorney to handle the intricacies of the notification. Beyond the notification, your construction accident lawyer will handle all aspects of your case. This includes dealing with all parties and claims, trying to settle directly with the insurance companies, or suing if there’s an impasse. Also, depending on the extent of the injuries and the state you are in, you may not be able to sue and only be able to recover a payment through Workers’ Compensation. It’s important to understand early on what legal route you have to recover. Hiring an experienced construction accident attorney not only helps you understand which steps to take for your recovery, but they also handle all the heavy lifting for you.
Speak with the Lawyers at Brown, LLC Today!
Over 100 million in judgments and settlements trials in state and federal courts. We fight for maximum damage and results.
Protect Your Legal Rights Following a Construction Accident
There are always statutory limitations surrounding accident claims. If you fail to report the injury in the correct manner or file the construction accident lawsuit in a timely manner, you may forfeit your rights to a recovery.
Another key tactic to avoid is if your employer or the insurance company tries to tell you to keep the lawyers out of it and, in turn, lowballs an offer or makes your sign something that short-circuits your rights. Insurers may offer quick settlements to minimize payouts–settlements that may be worth significantly less than what you are actually entitled to. They may also take advantage of the statute of limitations–the last possible date you are allowed to file your lawsuit–by dragging on a negotiation until the clock runs out and thus forfeiting your right to file a complaint.
Long Term Construction Accident Exposure
A more subtle type of construction accident case that you often don’t figure out until many years later is the consequences of exposure to chemicals that lead to certain cancers like leukemia, or lymphomas or other signature diseases. For example, remediation of asbestos without the proper gear may lead to mesothelioma, exposure to benzene may lead to Myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), or contact with Roundup on a construction site may result in Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (NHL). It’s only many years later when the cancer or NHL is diagnosed that one remembers they were exposed to a substance that could have caused it while working. However, if you have a signature injury, you should speak with a construction accident and mass tort law firm that handles cases regarding substances that cause signature medical conditions.
Have a Free Consultation with a Construction Accident Law Firm
Construction accidents have life-altering ramifications, and the legal process to resolve them is no walk in the park. Thus, hiring the right construction site accident lawyer is integral to your success with your case to obtain fair compensation for your injuries. Construction accident attorneys ensure that victims navigate the complexities of the legal process and simplify it for you. If you or a loved one were in a serious construction accident, find a construction accident attorney who offers free consultations and is only paid if they win your case like Brown, LLC – a law firm led by a former FBI Special Agent with hundreds of millions in recoveries. to understand your rights.