The Two Most Common Work Injury Workers Comp Questions Answered!

Hurt At Work? What Next?

In this article, I wanted to talk about worker’s compensation cases. Specifically, about the two biggest questions and concerns people who got hurt at work.

“Am I going to get in trouble at work if I make a worker’s comp claim?” And the other question is, “How much is the lawyer going to get paid? And am I going to get any of the money?”

So, there’s a story about what happened to a guy who call me and he said that he got hurt at work and they are completely running them around. The company sent him to the company doctors to talk to him. He’s going out to see his own doctor, aside from the company doctor who sees every injured person who works at his company.

Are You Going To Get Troubled At Work?

Here’s what I explained to him, that’s a bad idea to treat with the company doctors if the doctors are giving you a short shift. In other words, if the doctors aren’t addressing your concerns, you feel like they’re not on your side. Usually, a good reason for that is the doctors have an economic incentive to please the company, not you.

The reason why is the doctors make a lot of money off the injured workers that are sent to them by the company or the worker’s comp insurance company. So, I always tell people to think very carefully before you decide to treat with the company doctors. This guy had the same two questions. He was really worried about what might happen at work if he hires a worker’s comp lawyer and files a worker’s comp case. He was also worried about how do I get paid and all that stuff. So, I tell you what I told him.

Do You Want To Work At A Company Like That?

The first thing is most people who have a worker’s comp case, there are two categories. They’re the people who call me right away and that’s my preference if you call me right away. I can file a case for you and I can manage all the details for you and make sure that we have the strongest case.

But sometimes, people don’t want to do that. The other category of people who call me are the people who wait a little while and then they start sensing there’s something wrong, the company doctor wants to send them back to work even though they still have problems or they don’t to give them any more therapy or the doctors tell them they are okay but they still have serious medical problems. And the nurse case manager or the adjuster from the worker’s comp insurance company stops answering their calls or cuts off their pay, usually when that happens to people, they start like intuiting like something is different.

Now, they were kind of treating you nice at the beginning and now they’re treating you like a jerk, that’s the second category of people who call me after being hurt at work. Those cases can be a little bit more complicated, but this is what I’ll tell you, I have been doing this a long time and I will tell you the hard truth.

The first thing is, do you want to work at a company that treats you like that? Do you really want to continue working at a company who knows you’re at hurt but wants you to go back to work full duty? Who knows you need more medical care? But it’s important to them that they just send you back to work and limit how much money they have to pay you.

You Only Have One Body

You get one body and messing with your health is not cool. But I will tell you this, whether you’re union or non-union, if a company wants to get rid of you, they control your employment file. They have your employment file, they can write in there that you were laid, a bunch of times. Or that you refused to do work or that they caught you sleeping on the job or sometimes will happen is they make the job so unpleasant for you that you want to leave.

Now, it is actually very rare that this happens. I would say 99 out of 100 cases nothing happens like they don't fire you. They're a little salty for a little while, and then things go back to normal so it you don't really have to worry about them firing you.

Retaliatory Discharge Case

But if somebody is dumb enough to write you a letter or tell you we're firing you because of your workers comp case, you actually have what's called a “retaliatory discharge case”. Because, it's actually illegal for them to fire you just for filing a workers comp claim. But usually they're smarter than that, and they'll make up some other reason. But it is almost never happens that they fire you just because you have a workers comp case.