Mind & Body

A Complete Guide To Help You Win Your Workers’ Compensation Claim

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Injuries at work are a commonplace occurrence that is not only limited to labor-intensive jobs. Many people who work in an office environment and spend their day behind a desk can also fall victim to an office injury. However, injuries at work are much higher among people who have labor-intensive jobs. Occupations such as construction, plumbing, electrical repair, and many others put people at the risk of the environment and also machinery.

The state of Texas actually has the highest rate of work-related injuries, with 2 in every 100 workers reporting some form of injury. While this is something that happens all over the nation, workers in Texas report more injuries than any other state. This is also considering the fact that these are the number of injuries that actually get reported, while there may be just as many or even more that never come to the forefront because employees don’t know that they are entitled to compensation or don’t know how to get the compensation they deserve. Then there are also those employers who get off the hook by offering employees a settlement directly and the employee doesn’t file a lawsuit.

Getting Medical Attention

Before you even think about getting compensation for your injury, and before you do anything else, the first thing you should be doing is getting medical attention. This means getting specialized medical attention, not your regular family doctor. In the case of an injury or accident at work, you need an emergency medicine specialist to diagnose the situation and evaluate what kind of treatment you need. Once you have a consultation with this doctor, you can go to your regular doctor for a follow-up and continue treatment there. However, don’t rely on a general practitioner for an accurate diagnosis of injuries from an accident.

Getting Support

Depending on your circumstances and what your job entails, there could be quite a few places you could go to pursue this matter further. For instance, you might want to get in touch with the trade union, the HR department at your workplace, your insurance company, and also the hospital you are getting treatment from. If you are in the Texas area, then you should also consider a San Antonio work injury lawyer in case you need to go to trial. While going to trial is quite uncommon in workplace injury cases, you still want to have professional legal representation in any case. Even if you need to present the case in front of your employer and insurance company, a lawyer will help make that process that much easier.

Filing The Case

In some cases where the employer or other liable party is not cooperative, there is no other option but to go to trial. This can often be a complicated matter, and it is highly recommended that you don’t try to self-represent. Some employers and insurers might push for an out-of-court settlement, so you want to make sure you run this by your lawyer as well. In most cases, this is not going to be a good deal for you, and you are much better off going to court. However, this is a much faster route and you and your lawyer should take this decision together. If the compensation is good it’s not a bad choice but in most cases, it is not even close to what you could be awarded by the court.

Following Through

One of the biggest challenges in injury claim cases is being able to get the right evidence to support your claim. Injury claim cases are notorious for having a lot of ambiguity, and even with the best lawyer what you need is supporting evidence. The kind of evidence that you use in court needs to clearly highlight how you are the victim and that the employer is at fault. Moreover, applicants are also notorious for exaggerating the situation, and in most cases when an injury claims dispute goes to court, the jury and the judges already have a bias. This can make things a lot more challenging, and for this reason, it is even more important that you have the right evidence and the right people to win the case.

Also, don’t be surprised if you aren’t called in for a hearing even several months after filing the case. This is largely due to the massive backlog of cases that the legal institutions are dealing with year-round. In recent times, with the pandemic and the lockdowns, things have gotten even slower. Civil courts usually prioritize different cases based on urgency and unfortunately, injury claim cases aren’t deemed too important. However, be ready for whenever you are summoned and keep in mind that this could take a while to reach any conclusion.

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