Have you been injured on the job and have questions? Read these 3 construction accident tips, then contact our Hamburg lawyers to get started.
1. Hiring a Construction Accident Lawyer
If you’re injured on the job, you need a construction accident lawyer ike our firm provides. You need that sooner rather than later. The reason for that is that witnesses forget things quickly, and it’s important to have an attorney in our investigative team out there to look at the site immediately and measure it because cites change. If it’s an excavation site, you know they’re going to finish the job whether you got hurt or not. They’re going to move on, so you need to get pictures.
This can be critical to winning lawsuits. The earlier the better on a construction site attorney. We’ve sent investigators out the afternoon of injuries just to make sure we’re able to retrieve and save the worksite and what it looked like and get early statements from people if we can. People tend to forget things, even serious accidents. They can’t remember this or that date that it happened or where they were standing or how badly hurt the person looked at first instance. It’s critical to get a construction accident lawyer such as provided by our firm out just as soon as possible to get statements and to take pictures.
2. Job Site Safety
As a construction worker, your obligation is simply to use the safety devices that are available to you. Sometimes when you do not do this and you are injured, this can be a hindrance in bringing a third-party claim. This will not necessarily eliminate such a claim, but your failure to use those safety devices can impede us from bringing a successful claim. Employers are the ones who are ultimately responsible for providing the proper safety devices. If you are not provided the proper safety devices, you will have a claim.
3. Injured on the Job
The law requires that there be immediate notice to the employer if you’ve been injured on the job. If the employer does not know that you have been hurt on the job, there can be controversy later regarding whether you were in fact hurt on the job. The insurance company that represents that employer at the workers’ compensation board will then allege that the injury did not happen at work, attempting to discredit and lay the blame on the employee.
If you are injured at work, you need to report your construction site injury to your employer as soon as possible. Sometimes injuries are obvious; for example, if you fall into some sort of an excavation site, you will likely have a witness to your injury. In the event that you are injured at work and someone else did not hear or see the incident, especially if the injury relates to your back or your shoulder, you need to notify a colleague and your employer if you trip and fall and tear up your knee or tear up your ankle.
In many of the cases we have overseen, our clients have been unaware of their responsibility to let their employer know. Every employer should possess workers’ compensation board forms, which you must ask your doctor to complete. Most of the doctors in New York know exactly how to fill out workers’ compensation forms.
Did you suffer an injury on the job and have questions about 3 construction accident tips? Contact the experienced Hamburg Construction Accident Lawyers at Chiacchia & Fleming, LLP for a free consultation. We treat your case and your injuries seriously and do everything in our power to bring you relief.
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