The workers' compensation law affords you medical treatment and payment of a portion of your earnings while you’re out of work. To attain the benefits of this system, however, your injuries must arise out of a work accident.
With the skill and help of a work accident lawyer, you can clear the hurdle of proving a work-related injury. The law requires that you have been engaged in work at the time of the injury and that your injury be connected to some risk or condition involved with your employment.
Why You Must Get a Lawyer
Your injury at work represents a liability for your employer or its insurance company. For that reason, it is not uncommon for the lawyers of these parties to try to discredit your injury so they can avoid their law-imposed obligations.
In most cases, these efforts will involve trying to disqualify your injury by arguing it occurred outside of the scope of your employment. The employer or its insurance company will try to raise this as a reason to deny you benefits especially if you have a pre-existing health problem.
Other grounds that might prevent you from showing a work-related injury include:
- An injury that occurs while not working even if you’re with your employer, such as on a voluntary company picnic or recreational outing
- Intentionally-caused injuries
- An injury that occurs while you’re in substance abuse rehabilitation
Common Types of Work Injuries
Overexertion
An estimated 34 percent of workplace injuries have as their culprit overexertion. In this family of causes you will find:
- Lifting excessively-weighted objects
- Standing or sitting for long periods of time
- Repetitive motions
- Prolonged work in hot and humid environments
- Awkward stretches or arm movements
These injuries may qualify you for workers compensation if your job increased the risk that you would over exert yourself. For instance, inspectors may hurt their back while bending to pull parts or examine hard-to-reach components. Cashiers often spend more time than others standing at a register or reaching for groceries.
A work accident lawyer can help rebut arguments by your employer or its insurance carrier that you had pre-existing health problems that caused your injury. Even if you had a weak back or leg or a heart condition before your incident, it is possible to get compensation if your job increased the risk of hurting your back or suffering a cardiac event. The Workers' Compensation Commission and our courts do not necessarily deny compensation in these cases unless your prior condition prevents you from performing practically any activity (on or off the job).
Equipment or Objects
Contact or impact with a piece of equipment or other objects accounted for 235,740 of the 900,380 nonfatal workplace accidents in 2018 that caused employees to miss work. That translates to roughly one out of every four injured workers losing time on the job because of such contact.
These kinds of injuries arise from objects that fall, slide, swing, roll, or drive. Compression of body parts and collapses of buildings also involve impact with equipment or objects. Such incidents often have as root causes:
- Equipment failures
- Lack of equipment maintenance
- Malfunctioning safety equipment
- Objects being lifted without proper restraints or security
- Operator errors
While impact injuries can happen in many industries, construction workers face significant risks from cranes, trucks and other machines. Nearly three out of every four construction worker fatalities resulted from contact with heavy equipment.
Even when nonfatal, a contact-based work accident can significantly injure you and leave you permanently disabled at least partially, if not fully. Illinois law schedules the number of lost weeks for which you are compensated based upon the loss of function of particular body parts, such as feet, hands, arms, eyes or legs. In some cases, workplace incidents can leave you unable to perform any work and entitle you to permanent total disability.
Slips and Falls
Over a quarter of workplace accidents that involve lost time come via slip and falls. You might face an injury from falling on or tripping over:
- Slippery floors with liquid areas or spots
- Unsteady ladders
- Platforms that give way
- Cables, power cords, ropes or chains on the floor
- Loose objects such as mats, steps, rugs and rails
Not surprisingly, many slip and falls occur in retail establishments. In especially big-box stores, you may have to use ladders to reach merchandise stored on shelves. Fallen, opened and punctured containers cause leaks or spills of liquid in store aisles. You might even trip over a piece of equipment, merchandise, box of supplies or other object left on the shopping or stockroom floor rather than in its place. In 2018, approximately 27 percent of the 126,850 retail employees missing work were injured in a slip, fall or trip incident.
Restaurant workers, including cooks, other workers in the kitchen and wait staff risk slipping or falling from water, ice or utensils left on the floor.
Motor Vehicle Accidents
When you are performing your job at the time it happens, a car crash is a work accident. We can pursue compensation for your work-related motor vehicle crash whether you’re driving the company van or using your own car. Work-related motor vehicle injuries can also befall road construction workers hit by motorists or drivers or passengers en route to a specific job site or assignment.
In 2017, nearly one in four work-related fatalities, or approximately 1,300, occurred due to a motor vehicle incident. Accidents involving vehicles rank in the top five of incidents causing nonfatal injuries to employees.
Getting Workers' Compensation
If you experience a work injury, prompt action is needed. First, get medical treatment for your own sake and to build a record of your injuries and how they occurred.
Second, notify your employer as promptly as possible. You have 45 days from the date of the incident to give your employer notice of the accident. Also, the law sets a two-year deadline from the date of the incident to file your claim with the Illinois Workers' Compensation Commission.
Contact a work accident lawyer if you have been hurt on the job. A lawyer will guide you through the claims process, present your case that you suffered a work-related injury and work to get the benefits you deserve and need. An attorney in work injury cases can also evaluate whether you might have a viable claim against a third party, such as a negligent driver that caused your injuries.