Slips, trips, and falls are amongst the most common types of work-related accidents causing detrimental injuries that can displace workers from their jobs for long periods of time. It’s important that if you are injured on the job due to a fall, you contact a workers’ compensation attorney immediately. There are several factors that determine if you are eligible for workers’ compensation after a fall at your workplace and an experienced attorney can help look through your situation and develop the best game plan to fight for your rights as an injured worker.
If you fall at your workplace and are injured, you must be able to prove that you fell while performing job duties directly related to your responsibilities at work. Idiopathic is a term used in many slip and fall incidents meaning that the court rules that the accident and injury would have occurred regardless of if the individual was performing job duties or not.
Two examples of slip & fall cases at work that would likely turn out with very different workers’ compensation awards are as follows:
Scenario 1: Worker slips and falls while going to the restroom or getting a snack from a vending machine.
It would be difficult to earn worker’s compensation in this situation because the fall technically happened when the worker was doing something they likely would have done even if they were not at work (and outside of their job responsibilities).
Scenario 2: Worker slips while carrying something for their job or falls off a ladder while performing a repair at their workplace.
The injured worker would be much more likely to be awarded workers’ compensation benefits in this case because the injury occurred as a direct result of their work responsibilities.
As you can see, two seemingly similar situations with nearly identical injuries can have very different outcomes in court depending on the nature of the activity that was being performed when the injury occurred.
Slip and Fall accidents can happen anywhere—the grocery store, parks, office buildings, and parking garages. Wherever they occur, Poirier Law will make sure to investigate all options to find out if you have a case. If it turns out the property owners were negligent in any way, they will be held accountable.
Since accidents happen when you least expect them and in places you probably feel secure, they can have lasting effects on your quality of life. The unexpected medical bills, rehabilitation, hospital stays, lost wages, or disability can take a toll. Negligence, health and safety code violations, lack of warnings, insufficient security, and other failures to fix or maintain safe conditions for the public are grounds for a slip and fall case. Poirier Law Firm wants to make sure you are taken care of and any circumstance that caused your accident is cleared up to prevent another injury from occurring.