If you have been seriously injured in a construction accident, you may need help understanding construction accident claims. They can be complicated. Here is what you should know.
Understanding Construction Accident Claims | Basics
There is a lot of construction in Oklahoma right now. We’re kind of in a boom area, and so there’s a lot of construction workers, and sub-contractors working throughout the state. There are occasions where you have many sub-contractors on the job at one time and they don’t always pay attention to what they’re doing, and sometimes one sub-contractor can hurt another sub-contractor. They could hurt them with dropping something on someone. They could cause something to give way and they fall. They could drop something from scaffolding and hit somebody on the head. There are a lot of ways things can happen.
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Understanding Construction Accident Claims | Workers’ Compensation
What do you do if you’re on a construction site and you’re injured? You have a workers’ comp claim, but you also have a claim against that third-party, another sub-contractor, for negligence and not conducting their business in a prudent and ordinary fashion. If they violate the safety rules that are on the job site and in the profession, then you have a claim against them. Seek an attorney to determine if there is a claim. They are not always clear cut; there are a lot of nuances that go into a construction injury case in Oklahoma.
Suing Your Employer
In construction injury cases, one of the questions that comes up all the time is, “Can I sue my boss or my employer?” Generally, the answer is no, not in Oklahoma. The reason this is, is that workers’ compensation has been put in place to compensate an employee for any injury they receive on the job. Injuries on the job could occur from many things. They could occur from defective equipment. They can occur because of third-parties, other construction workers, or other employees. You may have a claim against these other people, depending on the facts and situation, depending on what happened, and if the equipment was defective in some way. As a general rule in Oklahoma, you cannot bring an action against your employer if you’re injured on the job or in a construction case.
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If you need help understanding construction accidents, please call our Oklahoma injury attorney James Murray today for a free consultation.