How Can a Lawyer Help Me After a Welding Accident at Work?

Welding accidents are some of the most common injuries on busy work sites, and welders frequently experience burns, falls, or crushing injuries. If this has happened to you, contact a personal injury attorney in Houston, TX as soon as possible to find out all the ways we can help in your specific situation.

How Can an Injury Attorney Help in Houston, TX Welding Accidents?

Explaining Your Rights and Legal Options

Texas has unique workers’ compensation laws compared to some states, and the law does allow employers to opt out of the state’s workers’ compensation system. Your employer is supposed to let you know about this at the time you are first hired, but employees are often still confused on this issue. A lawyer can determine whether your employer subscribes to workers’ compensation or is a non-subscriber, as this matters a great deal as you consider your next step.

If your employer carries workers’ compensation insurance, you should be able to collect benefits such as medical expenses and significant a portion of lost wages, among other things, and you’ll be eligible for these benefits even if you are responsible for the accident (though you cannot collect for injuries you deliberately cause yourself). However, accepting these benefits also usually means you cannot sue your employer for additional damages. You’ll need to resolve any dispute you have over the amount of compensation you’re given through the Texas Department of Insurance’s Division of Workers’ Compensation (DWC). You will want a lawyer by your side if you have to go to the DWC for negotiations.

For employers who are non-subscribers, and there are many in Texas, you would have the right to file a personal injury lawsuit against them for negligence, if that’s what caused your accident. You may also be able to bring a lawsuit if your injuries were caused by the negligence of a third party, even if your employer does have worker’s comp. In either of these scenarios, you will definitely need an attorney. The most important thing your attorney will do for you at this point is to help you understand all the avenues available for you to explore for full compensation.

Investigating the Accident Thoroughly

To make sure that you are properly protected, your lawyer will thoroughly investigate the accident. This is important in a lawsuit situation because you will need to prove who is liable. And in a worker’s comp situation, you may also need to show that you did not cause your injuries yourself, show that a third party was liable, or even show that your employer was grossly negligent. Your lawyer will tell you more.

To investigate, your lawyer will get the official records that detail the incident, collect all your medical records showing your injuries and the treatments that were required for them, get testimony from any witnesses who might have seen what happened, and also access any video or photographic evidence. It’s especially important to make sure the video evidence is preserved, and videos in working area areas are often automatically overwritten after a certain time to save space. Your lawyer will make sure this is preserved.

Your lawyer might also connect with some experts of various types (and they will have a network of such experts to draw upon), who can reconstruct the accident, give an opinion on liability, or explain your injuries and their connection to the accident in layman’s terms. Expert witnesses are often very important for explaining things to the court.

Identifying All Liable Parties

Sometimes, a third party may be partially or wholly responsible for your accident. For instance, if faulty equipment caused the injury, the manufacturer or maintenance provider might be liable rather than your employer or another employee. A lawyer will identify all potential defendants, and doing so may possibly increase the compensation available to you.

Negotiating with Insurance Companies

Dealing with insurance companies can be challenging. In most cases, the insurer has a very simple goal: to meet the letter of the law when it comes to their contractual obligations while paying out the least possible amount of money to protect their own bottom line. This only makes sense, since an insurance company is a business, and businesses exist to make money, but it means that their best interests are fundamentally at odds with yours.

Insurance companies investigate these sorts of accidents all the time and are very good at finding loopholes for paying less and negotiating aggressively. Having a lawyer will level this playing field. Your lawyer has done this many times and understands the tactics that the insurance companies use. Your lawyer also fully understands the law and is a negotiator by profession. Your lawyer will make sure that you are protected and that you get the greatest possible compensation under the circumstances.

Maximizing Your Compensation

A lawyer understands the types of damages you can claim beyond the immediate medical costs that are likely uppermost in your own mind. It’s common for injured people to overlook a number of things that they should be adding on to ask compensation for. After all, you have likely never done this before, so it’s natural that you wouldn’t really know everything that you might be owed.

Your lawyer does understand all of this, however, and will help you to calculate everything that you are owed. This might include things like:

• Lost Wages: Not just the basic salary you would normally make, but also potential future earnings if you cannot return to work and even possible missed overtime or bonus opportunities.
• Pain and Suffering: If you’re able to bring a lawsuit, you can get a monetary value assigned to the physical pain and emotional distress you’ve endured.
• Punitive Damages: In cases of gross negligence, punitive damages may be added to punish the wrongdoer.

Protecting You From Inappropriate Blame

If you have worker’s comp, it will cover you whether you were at fault for the accident or not. However, in a personal injury lawsuit, there is the question of degree of fault. So long as you were not more than 50% responsible for the accident, you would be able to bring a lawsuit and collect damages. However, your damages would be reduced by the same percentage as your fault.

It is not unheard of for an insurance company or employer to attempt to cast as much blame on the employee as possible to minimize what they have to pay. Your lawyer will protect you from unfair accusations of blame and work to prove who is at fault and to what degree.

Dealing With All Legal Procedures

Finally, everything must be done according to the law and within the time limit (statute of limitations) for filing personal injury lawsuits. If you miss the deadline, or if your documents are not filed promptly and in the right way, you could lose out on your right to bring a lawsuit at all. It’s also important that your Worker’s Compensation paperwork be filled out perfectly, as even a minor mistake can greatly delay your compensation or cause a denial of some as aspect of your claim.

If you’ve been injured in a welding accident, contact Abraham, Watkins, Nichols, Agosto, Aziz & Stogner for help in Houston, TX today.