When To Call Attorney After Construction Accident
Construction workers handle dangerous tools in hazardous environments on a daily basis. The equipment that is worked with, in addition to the conditions (along busy roads, in extreme climates), have the possibility to contribute to a construction accident.
If you are involved in a construction accident, it is absolutely imperative to contact and Ohio construction accident lawyer as soon as possible.
Most people don’t call our office to look into their construction accident, but instead call and say they’ve been injured at work. We bring them in for a workers compensation claim and begin to talk to them about the situation and ensure that they are seeing the correct doctors for their workers compensation claim. As we listen to the investigation for their workers’ compensation claim, we learn that it is a construction accident. This means that the fault of the accident sometimes involve the employer as well as a third party (general contractor, sub-contractor).
Read about the causes of construction accidents.
In order to protect the injured workers legal rights, we do a variety of things. We would file a request for an independent OSHA investigation on how the accident happened. If this investigation then comes up with a report comes up with a violation, we file a VSSR claim, which is a Violation of a Specific Safety Requirement under the workers’ compensation claim.
A VSSR claim is filed under workers’ compensation law and further penalizes the employer that was responsible for the violation of safety requirements. These claims can result in an additional aware that ranges from 15% to 50% of the weekly compensation rate. This would then result in an investigation at the state level, including all of the witnesses and the fact pattern. This helps us to make a claim against the third party responsible in the construction accident.
Another thing our construction accident lawyers would do is to hire an expert in the specific area of the type of accident.
- If our client was injured on a machine that did not have a safety guard, we would hire a mechanical engineer
- If the accident resulted in an electrical injury, we would hire an electrical engineer
- If the construction accident required an accident reconstructionist, we would arrange to have one work on the case
- If the injury was a fall from a high platform, we would hire an OSHA expert that deals with scaffolds, forklifts, etc.
The important thing to do for your case is to hire a lawyer as soon as possible. There are many factors of the investigation that they can work on immediately, including obtaining of photos related to the accident and construction site, hiring the right experts to support your claim, and ultimately protect your legal rights.
