When Can You Sue Your Employer for a Work Injury?

Work Injuries, Workers Comp / December 18, 2020

If you are injured at work, you may feel as though you have nowhere to turn.

In general, employers have workers’ compensation insurance in place through state workers’ compensation laws or federal compensation laws. Workers’ compensation is meant to cover your expenses while you recover from your injuries.

Because workers’ comp is meant to cover your damages – emotional and physical trauma, diseases caused by working conditions, lost wages, and therapy to help you recover fully – you are usually unable to file a lawsuit for damages against your employer.

There are certain cases, however, when filing a lawsuit is necessary in order to make you whole.

when can i sue my employer

When Can I File Suit?

While one never wants to file a lawsuit – the paperwork can be challenging, and meeting the defendant in an attorney’s office or in court can be extremely intimidating – there are times when you may not have a choice, not just for you, but for the others that follow. (It’s important to realize that when you file a lawsuit, you often set a precedent, and attorneys for people who experience similar unfortunate circumstances will use your lawsuit and its outcome as a guide. While painful, lawsuits are cases such as these have a degree of altruism, and that makes all the difference.)

Let’s say your employer is a volatile sort, who rages when things go wrong. If you are on the wrong end of his rage and he should happen get physical, you have a very good case for filing a lawsuit that may or may not go to court. Your case is especially strong if he punches you or assaults you in some other way.

Your lawsuit – in this case a tort case (tort is an infringement of your rights or a wrongful act) – hinges on your employer’s deliberate attempt to hurt you. This type of lawsuit has nothing to do with negligence, but since it occurred in the workplace, it is related to work, so you may sue your employer.

There are several other workplace situations that fall under tort law, and open the door for a lawsuit against your employer.

  • Your employer threatens you but does not injure you. The threat alone is enough to provide evidence for a lawsuit, not only because it is inappropriate in the workplace, but because you have no way of knowing if your employer’s threats will escalate.
  • If your employer allegedly caused you intentional harm on the job, you may file a suit under tort law.
  • If your property was damaged at your place of work.
  • If your employer caused emotional distress – a hostile workplace would qualify, especially one where your boss favors certain workers and rewards their good work but not yours or gives the best projects to those workers – you may file a lawsuit against him or her.
  • Fraud also falls under tort law. If something is misrepresented about your job – either during a phone interview, an in-person interview, or in writing – that’s fraud. An employer may make false claims about salary, bonuses, job titles, responsibilities, potential promotions, job security, job risk factors, or the length of time the job is expected to last. 
  • Defamation is also grounds for a lawsuit. If false rumors including those that fall under the categories of libel and slander are spread about the workplace, causing you emotional trauma, you may sue your employer under tort laws.
  • Invasion of your privacy. If private information – your health conditions, for example – or emails or photographs are shared with many people in your office or throughout your company, you have grounds for a lawsuit. 1

Filing Beyond Tort

There are certain other instances when you can sue your employer.

  1. You may sue your employer if they don’t have workers’ compensation insurance, or the insurance they have in place is not adequate enough to cover your injuries. It is against the law for your employer to have either no or insufficient workers’ comp insurance, which opens the door for your lawsuit.
  2. You may also file a lawsuit in order to recover any damages associated with toxic chemicals, although in this case, it is generally the manufacturer of the substance who is legally responsible for your injuries. In that case, you would file a civil suit against the manufacturer. The chemical manufacturer would also be responsible for any illnesses or disease you may contract related to the chemical, if a correlation between the two can be proven.
  3. Your employer was grossly negligent, and did not ensure that the conditions of your workplace were safe for every worker. Any injury suffered under those conditions gives you the right to file a lawsuit.
  4. You were injured by a product your employer manufactured. If the product was defective, whether going through the process of being made or after quality control gave its approval, that falls under the category of “product liability,” and allows you to file a lawsuit against your employer.
  5. If your injury was the result of poor workmanship on the behalf of a contractor or subcontractor hired by your employer, you may file a lawsuit.
  6. If you are a contractor and are injured where you have either been assigned to work or were hired to work, you are not eligible to file a workers’ compensation claim, so your only option to recover your medical and other expenses by filing a lawsuit against the business where you were working at the time of the injury. You will be eligible for full compensation because of the company’s negligence.
  7. There is one time that you cannot file a lawsuit against your employer. If your workers’ compensation claim is denied, you must instead file an appeal with the agency that is in charge of workers’ compensation appeals, which in most states is the workers’ compensation appeals board. If, however, your claim was denied in bad faith – he or she was intentionally dishonest about risk factors in the workplace and failed to take responsibility for it – and you have exhausted the requisite appeals it an attempt to secure workers’ comp, hire an attorney to help you sue for damages.

What About Serious Injuries?

There are times when workers’ compensation just can’t cover injuries that are serious, such as those that are debilitating, life-altering, and disabling.                     

For example, in 1986, a Wisconsin man was working for a construction company rebuilding an incinerator when pounds of charcoal dust ignited when it came into contact with a propane space heater. He was burned over 86 percent of his body, including his face. He suffered the pain of 145 skin grafts and became deaf due to the antibiotics that hospital workers used to treat the infections caused by his burns. His life will never be the same. Two other workers were also injured, although their burns were not quite so severe. 2

In 2017, the three were awarded more than $20 million in a suit against the company, with the worker who sustained the most serious burns taking home $15 million for his injuries.

In such a situation, there is no option but to file a lawsuit, because workers’ compensation insurance cannot cover injuries of that level of severity.

In 2018, former United States Postal Service workers filed a class action lawsuit USPS alleging discrimination after suffering work injures. The suit claims that the workers were harassed and discriminated against following their injuries, and the postal service refused to accommodate them with jobs that were less taxing, even those who suffered disabilities as a result of their on-the-job injuries.

According to the lawsuit, workers who were moved to different, less physically demanding jobs under what the postal service called the National Reassessment Process, were later fired, despite paperwork from doctors stating the type of work they were capable of doing safely based on their conditions. The suit included workers 135,000 workers who worked for USPS from 2006 to 2011.

The postal workers won their class action suit after review from the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. 3

According to one attorney involved with the case, Washington, DC-based Jeremy Wright of Kator, Parks, Weiser & Harris, “The decision in this case delivers a stern warning to every employer to respect the rights of workers with disabilities, and to never treat them as second-class.”

How Common are Work-Related Injuries?

work injury

There are more injuries that happen on the job than you may think. Stop right now and count to 21 seconds. In the United States, while you were counting, three workers were injured at work. While not all of those injuries were serious, some had devastating consequences.

According to the National Safety Council, U.S workers suffer:

  • 540 work injuries per hour
  • 12,900 work injuries per day
  • 90,400 work injuries per week
  • 7 million work injuries per year 4

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 2.8 million non-fatal job-related accidents in 2019, which was unchanged from the year before. Not all of those, of course, require workers’ compensation. 5

Others, of course, can be more serious.

On average, according to the National Safety Council, 99 days of lost work annually and 21 days of disability occur as a result of those injuries. Some injured workers are able to return immediately, but others are forced into long-term disability.

Which Injuries Are Most Common?

Many people who are injured on the job never report their injuries and as a result, do not receive any medical attention for those injuries. In some cases, not reporting what seems like a minor injury can result in long-term problems down the road, so it is important to report injuries – and get checked out by a physician – as soon as possible after the accident occurs.

Of those workplace injuries that are reported, the NCS reports the following as the most common:

  • Sprains, strains, and tears. Overexertion of muscles as well as tendons and ligaments due to reaching, stretching, overuse or twisting is the most common workplace injury.
  • Pain and soreness. Chronic back pain can be a debilitating problem, whether you operate heavy equipment or you spend all day seated in a similar, uncomfortable position. (You know those office chairs can be less than comfortable, and now you know they can do lasting damage.)
  • Cuts or puncture wounds. Factory work is a real danger zone for lacerations, but even old-time newspapers – where Exacto knives could easily cause a puncture wound or slice skin deeply – had their own set of dangers.

No matter where you work, a workplace injury is a possibility, and in some cases, those injuries can be life-changing, leading to long-term disability.

These are the times when a lawsuit is likely the better move.

Lawsuits are especially likely if injuries occur on the site of some of the most dangerous jobs in the world. The NCS reports that the most disabling injuries that cause either missed time from work or the inability to return to work come from these five occupations, based on statistics: 

  • Those who work in the service injury, such as police officers, firefighters or EMT workers
  • Transportation or shipping workers
  • Manufacturing and production workers
  • Repair, maintenance, and installation workers

Death on the Job?

While no one expects to go to work and never come home, some jobs are dangerous and potentially deadly. These are the jobs that can cause life-threatening injuries or death, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Based on OSHA statistics, the four most common on-the-job deaths are caused by:

  • Falls
  • Being hit by falling objects
  • Electrocution
  • Becoming trapped between two objects

These injuries are mostly associated with construction or utility work, both of which are dangerous for workers, and more likely to lead to lawsuits over debilitating injuries. 5

What Does a Lawsuit Mean?

If you are forced to file a lawsuit against your employer, it is not as simple as filling out forms for a workers’ compensation claim. 

A civil lawsuit filed as a result of negligence on the part of your employer requires proof that workplace negligence was the reason for your injury. You will require plenty of evidence before you and your attorneys proceed.

NOTE: If you live in Texas, employers are not required to have workers’ compensation.

  1. https://www.opm.gov/about-us/our-people-organization/office-of-the-general-counsel/federal-tort-claims-act/
  2. https://www.cannon-dunphy.com/three-burned-workers-awarded-17-2-million-in-lawsuit/
  3. https://postalnews.com/blog/2018/03/26/nrp-class-action-victory-against-usps/
  4. https://workinjurysource.com/workplace-injury-statistics-injury-rates-common-work-injuries/
  5. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/osh.pdf