Employees today benefit from enhanced protections and statutory restrictions on working hours, cleaner workplaces, and safer technology and machinery. However, even with these protections, workplace injuries still occur far too often.

If you experience harm at work, you might face a challenging recovery. As you fight to get better physically and emotionally, you might find yourself with high medical bills and other expenses. Fortunately, a Sacramento workplace injury lawyer can help you review your legal options. A dedicated personal injury attorney can see if you have viable grounds to pursue a lawsuit against the person or entity responsible for causing your workplace injury.

Explaining Third-Party Lawsuits After Sacramento Work Injuries

Employers are protected and cannot be sued by their employees in civil lawsuits under workers’ compensation statutes, but that immunity and protection does not extend to third parties. When workers experience serious injuries on the job, they might be able to seek compensation from someone other than their employer in a legal claim because a worker’s employer is not necessarily the only person or entity responsible for a workplace accident.

Third-party claims are lawsuits that are not directly between a worker and their employer or a coworker. A third-party lawsuit is appropriate when someone other than an employer does something that results in a worker’s injury. In a claim against a third party for a workplace injury, an injured worker would need to establish that the third party’s actions or inactions directly led to their injury.

A Sacramento lawyer at Erkel Law, P.C. who understands workers’ injuries can investigate a workplace accident or incident to learn why it happened and who caused it.

Potential Defendants in a Workers’ Injury Lawsuit

When an accident or incident at work results in a worker’s injury, more than one party could bear potential legal responsibility.

Other Contractors and Subcontractors

Multiple companies may work together on a project. For instance, on a construction site, roofers, construction workers, plumbers, and electricians all need to perform their job duties in the company of other workers. If an electrician mistakenly leaves a live downed wire and a construction worker touches it and suffers a serious burn, that electrician could face liability in a third-party civil lawsuit because their negligence led to the construction worker’s injury.

Drivers

When a worker is driving a company car while traveling for work, or a truck driver is driving their commercial delivery route and another automobile hits them, the worker could potentially sue the negligent driver for damages.

Site Owners

An injured worker might be able to sue the owner of their worksite for failing to keep the property in reasonably safe condition. For instance, if the owner of a hotel did not have sufficient security and a criminal broke in and assaulted the front desk clerk, that injured worker could sue the hotel’s owner on the grounds of premises liability.

Product Manufacturers

When workers experience harm due to a defective product, they could sue the manufacturer. For example, if a factory worker loses a finger when a piece of machinery malfunctions, the company that produced and sold the faulty machinery could be legally responsible.

A determined legal professional from Sacramento understands how challenging workplace injuries can be.

Work with a Sacramento Workplace Injury Attorney

When you get hurt on the job, you probably have a great deal of questions, and you might not know where to turn. Contact a Sacramento workplace injury lawyer who cares about helping people like you and will give you the time you need. A knowledgeable lawyer at Erkel Law, P.C. will answer your questions, investigate what happened to you, and help guide you through a lawsuit against the responsible parties.

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