Florida Workers Comp Attorneys

Workers' compensation laws were originally designed to help injured workers and their employers avoid expensive, time-consuming lawsuits that assign blame for the injury. Thus, if you accept Florida no-fault workers' compensation benefits, you are usually not able to sue your employer or collect non-economic damages such as pain and suffering. However, under certain circumstances, you may still be able to pursue a legal claim. An experienced Jacksonville workers' compensation claim attorney can help you evaluate whether the circumstances of your injury gives you access to the courts.

Thanks to a law that took effect in October of 2003, Florida employees who have accepted workers' compensation benefits may still sue their employers if they can show that the employer's actions created a "virtual certainty" that someone would be hurt. To do that, workers must show not only physical evidence that there was danger, but that the employer knew about it, concealed it, failed to warn employees or take any other safety precautions, and that there were prior incidents and complaints because of the dangerous condition. If your employer fires you merely for exercising your legal right to file a workers' compensation claim, it has done something illegal and may be liable for a "retaliation" lawsuit. And of course, you may also sue your employer if it was illegally operating without any workers' compensation insurance at all, denying you the chance to collect workers' compensation benefits -- something that 13.6 percent of Florida employees were doing in 1997, according to an audit.

If a third party -- another person or company that's not your employer -- caused or contributed to the accident that hurt you, that party may also be liable under all the laws that govern injuries outside the workplace. In this case, you may claim workers' compensation while pursuing a personal-injury lawsuit against the third party. The third party could be a subcontractor or other company you don't work for that created a dangerous situation in your workplace, such as a pest control company that spreads poison that sickens employees. It could also be an individual, like someone who runs a red light and hit a delivery driver on duty. If you were injured in the job by a product that turned out to be defective, you may be able to file a products liability lawsuit against the designer or manufacturer of that product. And under certain circumstances, if you were injured by a co-worker with different duties or supervisors from yours, you can sue that person while still receiving workers' compensation.

Nobody wants a workplace injury -- not the employer, not the insurer, and certainly not the hurt worker. But when someone else's carelessness or deliberate act takes you off the job, you can and should hold that person responsible under Florida State and Federal laws. Workers' compensation law is complex and an experienced Jacksonville workers comp attorney at Farah and Farah can make a dramatic difference in how much compensation you can collect for your injuries. For a free consultation on your unique case, call our Jacksonville office today.