Florence, SC Workplace Injury Lawyer
After an injury at work, you should get legal advice from an experienced attorney. Many insurance plans and employment benefits might try to pay for your injuries, potentially paying you less than you deserve. All the while, your employer and their insurance companies might deny involvement and try to avoid paying you benefits.
In many cases, taking your case to a lawyer and filing a lawsuit against the relevant parties will be the best way to get you the compensation you need to pay for your damages. Workplace injury victims are often entitled to payments for medical expenses, the wages they lost, and the pain and suffering they faced, but getting these damages might require a legal battle.
For help, call (803) 451-4000 to speak with the workplace injury lawyers at Burriss Ridgeway Injury Lawyers today.
When to Call a Lawyer After a Workplace Injury in Florence, SC?
If you were hurt at work, it is best to call a lawyer as soon as you can. You may believe that the only way to get compensation is through Workers’ Compensation, but following that path might reveal that there are damages that will not be paid, leading to further confusion about how to get your injuries compensated. All the while, you might not know how to go about getting compensation and how much compensation your case is supposed to be worth.
When you call our workplace injury lawyer early in the process, we can help you understand all this, including your right to sue after a work injury. The earlier you contact us, the more we can do to help you.
While you generally might not be able to call a lawyer the minute an accident happens – and likely not even on day one of dealing with the injury – you should contact us before you make any legal moves. We can guide you through what actions you should take on your own, help you with any forms you need, and begin investigating, documenting, and tracking damages in your case so that we can get the full picture. We can also guide you through what to say and who not to discuss the case with to help protect your claim.
Common Ways Victims Hurt Their Workplace Injury Claims in Florence, SC
Any time you have a potential injury case on your hands, it is important to protect your case and avoid common pitfalls that lead injury victims to damage their own case. The following are some of the things to avoid that might hurt your claim, but there are other issues our lawyers can help you with as well.
Telling Your Employer Too Much
Your employer might expect filings for insurance purposes as well as a full incident report after your injury. While you might be obligated to make these reports and tell your boss what happened, you should avoid giving away too much information that might be used against you.
One big thing to avoid is telling your employer anything they could misinterpret as an admission that the accident was your fault. If you say something like, “At first, I thought I caused the accident,” they will take that to mean it is your fault. While insurance claims are no-fault claims, an employer’s insurer could try to use this admission as proof that you intentionally caused the accident, and any third-party defendants could also use this as proof of your fault.
Also, avoid extraneous information, especially about things that happened outside of work. For example, if you say that your leg was weak because you hurt it last week at home, and then you hurt it again at work, your employer and any other defendants could use this information to argue that the injury actually happened at home in that non-work-related accident.
Not Telling Your Employer Enough
While you should not tell your boss too much, you should also avoid telling them too little. Making proper records of accidents helps show that the accident really happened, happened at the time and date you claim it did, and was serious enough to warrant a report. Failing to make proper reports or keeping your employer and other parties in the dark to avoid unnecessary disclosures could hurt your case, too.
Posting Online
Any statements you make about your accident, its cause, and the resulting injuries can be used as evidence in your case. If you make posts online that contradict your official explanation about what happened in your accident, those posts could be used to show you are lying – or at least that the facts do not match your different statements.
Additionally, any posts that might undercut your narrative about your injuries should be avoided. For example, if you hurt your leg at work and then post videos from a marathon you ran, that will not look good to a jury even if there is a legitimate excuse, like that the marathon took place before the workplace accident. Even that could be used to show the extra strain from a marathon caused the injury instead of the workplace accident.
Avoid Talking About the Accident
In the same way that new information or inconsistent information from a social media post can hurt your case, so can information gleaned from people you talked to about the injury. While you can certainly keep close family and friends informed about your injury, talking about the case or the facts and your status is risky.
Insurance companies and defense attorneys will often interview friends, family, and coworkers in an attempt to find inconsistencies or testimony that undermines your case. This is especially true of coworkers who might feel the need to help their employer or other parties in the case against you for fear of losing their job.
Call Our Workplace Injury Attorneys Today
Call Burriss Ridgeway Injury Lawyers at (803) 451-4000 for a free case evaluation with our workplace accident attorneys today.
