If You Are Fired or Laid Off

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If you are terminated by your employer, that doesn’t mean the end of your rights. In fact, getting laid off may activate a whole new set of rights. For example, that you can’t be fired because of your race, color, national origin, sex, or religious belief, and you can take action against your employer if you are. And even if you are terminated for a lawful reason you may still have some rights, such as the right to collect unemployment insurance benefits. If you discover that you are being terminated and you belong to a union, you should immediately contact the union; as a collective bargaining agreement may give you some rights to job security, reinstatement, or benefits—rights that a nonunion employee doesn’t have.

If you or a loved one has been injured at work it is important to protect your legal rights. Call (916) 922-9902 to speak with a Sacramento California workers compensation injury attorney, Tom Johnson.

Anderson & Johnson LLP
855 Howe Avenue
Sacramento, CA 95825
(916) 922-9902

Suing Third Parties

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Although you generally are barred from suing your employer and coworkers for on-the-job injuries, you usually can sue anyone else (a “third party”) who injures you while you are working. You may also be able to sue that person’s employer if the person was acting within the course of his or her job when you were hurt. For instance, if another company’s delivery backs into you because the driver wasn’t looking, you can sue the driver and the company he or she works for for negligence. Likewise, if you are a traveling salesman and are injured on a business trip in an automobile accident caused by another person, you can sue that person for your injuries in addition to collecting workers’ compensation benefits. Or surpose that you work for Les’s Tools and Die and are injured by a defective machine made by ABZ Corporation. You can collect workers’ compensation benefits from Les’s, since you were an employee injured on the job. You can also bring a lawsuit to ABZ Corporation for manufacturing and distributing a defective machine.

If you or a loved one has been injured at work it is important to protect your legal rights. Call (916) 922-9902 to speak with a Sacramento work injury attorney, Tom Johnson.

Anderson & Johnson LLP
855 Howe Avenue
Sacramento, CA 95825
(916) 922-9902

Worker Compensation Laws

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Workers’ compensation laws are based on the theory that “the cost of the product should bear the blood of the workman.” In other words, as a cost of doing business, an employer is required to pay for injuries its employees suffer on the job. The employer offsets this increased cost of doing business by raising its prices to the general public. Spread our over hundreds of thousands or millions of customers, the increase is generally rather small.

Before there were workers’ compensation acts, employees had a tough time collecting any money for the injuries or for the wages they lost when they were injured on the job and were off work temporarily or permanently. It was true that they could sue their employers, but winning was another story. First, the worker had to prove that the employer or one of his or her employees caused the accident, which was not easy to do. And even if the worker succeeded at this, the employer still won many cases by claiming that the employee assumed the risk of injury or has partially caused his or her own injuries. The “fellow servant” rule usually barred the employee from suing coworkers who had injured him or her unless the fellow employee acted intentionally.

If you or a loved one has been injured at work it is important to protect your legal rights. Call (916) 922-9902 to speak with a Sacramento work injury lawyer, Tom Johnson.

Anderson & Johnson LLP
855 Howe Avenue
Sacramento, CA 95825
(916) 922-9902

How to Claim Your Benefits

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You usually don’t need an attorney to help you with your workers’ compensation claim, at least not if your injury is relatively minor and you are out of work for only a short period of time. But if the injury is fairly serious, or thw worker was killed, it is best to be represented by an attorney. You should certainly hire an attorney if problems arise in the processing of your claim or if you plan on appealing the initial decision.

When Even Maximum Benefits Are Too Small

Anytime workers’ compensation benefits don’t adequately compensate you, you should consider whether your employer, a fellow employee, or a third party was responsible for the accident and is liable or the rest of your damages. This is an especially important concern in cases involving serious injuries or death. The following situations are among the more common ones when you can sue others for job-related injuries and deaths.

If you or a loved one has been injured at work it is important to protect your legal rights. Call (916) 922-9902 to speak with a work injury lawyer in Sacramento, Tom Johnson.

Anderson & Johnson LLP
855 Howe Avenue
Sacramento, CA 95825
(916) 922-9902

How to Claim You Benefits

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When you suffer a work-related injury, you should notify your employer or superior as soon as possible and ask for a claim form to fill out. You will have to report the basic information – when, when, and how you were injured – and submit proof of your injury, including doctor’s bills. If your claim is accepted, your benefits should commence promptly, usually on a weekly basis. If your claim is denied partly or completely, you can have it reviewed by the workers’ compensation appeals board (WCAB). You can sue the WCAB if you don’t agree with its decision and have the extent of your disability, its permanence, and the amount of your benefits decided in court.

If you or a loved one has been injured at work it is important to protect your legal rights. Call (916) 922-9902 to speak with a work injury attorney in Sacramento, Tom Johnson

Second Injury Fund & Uninsured Employer Fund

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Workers compensation claims can be complicated when an individual has suffered an injury while employed with one company and then goes to work for another company and later reinjures him or herself. Which employer is going to be responsible for that compensation?

Some states have set up what is referred to as a second injury fund. In these states, that second injury will be partially paid by the second company. That second injury fund is a fund of money that is created by contributions from all of the different insurance companies that underwrite workers’ compensation insurance coverage in that jurisdiction.

If you or a loved one has been injured at work it is important to protect your legal rights. Call (916) 922-9902 to speak with Tom Johnson, a Sacramento work injury lawyer.

A similar type of fund that may exist is the uninsured employer’s fund. An employer who has not taken out workers’ compensation coverage and who therefore cannot pay the benefits called for under the workers’ compensation act may still be covered in the sense that the employee may make a claim against the uninsured employer’s fund. To the extent that any payments are made out of that fund, the fund administrator or the attorney general of that state will typically make a claim against the uninsured employer in order to recover such payments.

If you or a loved one has been injured at work it is important to protect your legal rights. Call (916) 922-9902 to speak with Tom Johnson, a Sacramento work injury attorney.

Limitations on Your Right to Benefits

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Worker’s compensation benefits are payable only if your injury is related to your job. The clearest example of a work-related injury occurs when you are hurt on your employer’s premises during working hours, while you are doing your job and getting paid for it. You usually are entitled to benefits if you are injured in the company lunchroom during a rest break.

Can you get benefits if you are injured in a traffic accident on the way to work? Usually not. Under the so-called “going and coming” rule, you are generally not entitled to workers’ compensation benefits if you are injured while commuting to and from work. If, however, you are an outside salesman and call on clients between your home and the office, you are probably eligible for benefits.

If you or a loved one has been injured at work it is important to protect your legal rights. Call (916) 922-9902 to speak with Tom Johnson, a Sacramento work injury attorney.

You can’t get benefits if you deliberately injure yourself. (But you can get benefits if you were injured by your own carelessness.) Many states deny you benefits if the injuries happened because you were drunk or high on drugs. But the intoxication must have been a cause of the accident. If you are walking down an aisle of a warehouse when a light bulb explodes and injures you, for instance, you can recover workers’ compensation benefits even if you were drunk, since your drunkenness had nothing to do with the accident.

Most workers’ compensation acts also limit benefits to cases where physical injuries are suffered. Disease and illness often aren’t covered by workers’ compensation laws (but other laws may cover industrial diseases). Things like emotional distress and mental suffering, violation of your civil rights, defamation, and invasion of privacy are all beyond the scope of many workers’ compensation acts, although, you may have the right to sue in court your employer or fellow employee who infringed upon your rights.

If you or a loved one has been injured at work it is important to protect your legal rights. Call (916) 922-9902 to speak with Tom Johnson, a Sacramento work injury attorney.

Workers’ Compensation Laws

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A waitress carrying a tray of food slips on a loose tile, falls and creaks here wrist; she is out of work for three months. A maintenance worker changing a light bulb falls off a ladder and is paralyzed, never to work again. A loading-dock worker is run over by a forklift and killed. All of these workers have one thing in common: They or their families are probably entitled to receive workers compensation benefits.

Workers’ compensation laws are designed to provide an expeditious system of compensating an employee who was injured – or the family of an employee who was killed – in a work related incident.

If you or a loved one has been injured at work it is important to protect your legal rights. Call (916) 922-9902 to speak with Tom Johnson, a Sacramento work injury lawyer.

Employers are required to purchase workers’ compensation insurance to protect their employees. In return, employers receive the guarantee that they generally can’t be sued by their employees and expose to the higher amounts a jury might award. Employees are guaranteed that they will receive benefits if they are injured on the job, regardless of who causes the injuries. Workers’ compensation acts also are intended to reduce the role of attorneys, so that all or most of the benefits go to the injured employee or to the family of an employee killed on the job.

If you or a loved one has been injured at work it is important to protect your legal rights. Call (916) 922-9902 to speak with Tom Johnson, a Sacramento work injury attorney.

Who is Entitled to Receive Benefits

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To be eligible to receive workers’ compensation benefits, your must be an employee of a covered company at the time of the accident. All employees are presumed covered unless the law specifically excludes their class of workers from coverage. Farm workers, domestic help, voluntary workers, and people who work for nonprofit organizations are excluded from coverage in many states.

If you or a loved one has been injured at work it is important to protect your legal rights. Call (916) 922-9902 to speak with Tom Johnson, a work injury attorney in Sacramento.

Occasional temporary employees are usually not entitled to benefits, but regular part-time employees are. In some states, employers of a small number of workers (usually less than three, four or five) do not have to provide workers’ compensation protection for their employees.

If you or a loved one has been injured at work it is important to protect your legal rights. Call (916) 922-9902 to speak with Tom Johnson, a work injury lawyer in Sacramento.

Suppose that you have your own air-conditioning business and are hired by Day Construction Company to install air conditioners in a new building. While doing so, part of the ceiling falls and injures you. Can you collect workers’ compensation benefits from Day Construction Company? No. You are considered to be an “independent contractor” rather than an employee of the prime contractor, here Day Construction Company. However, if you can prove an employee of Day Construction Company was negligent in installing that part of the ceiling, you would be entitled to sue and recover from Day.

If you or a loved one has been injured at work it is important to protect your legal rights. Call (916) 922-9902 to speak with Tom Johnson, a work injury attorney in Sacramento CA.