Workers' Compensation Vs Non-Subscribers

San Antonio Lawyer Michael Grossman Discusses the Complexities of On-the-Job Accident Cases and Non-subscriber vs Workers’ Comp Claims

In order to give yourself the best opportunity to secure compensation after you have been hurt, or a family member has been killed, in an accident at work in San Antonio, you need to find the guidance, knowledge and skill of an attorney you can trust to protect your rights.

The appropriate way to conduct your case depends on several different factors due to the differences between work-related injury cases for employers who purchase workmen’s compensation, known as subscribers, and those that do not, referred to as non-subscribers. By subscribing to workers’ compensation insurance, employers receive protection from personal injury lawsuits, so disreputable employers may sometimes feign such coverage in order to avoid paying full compensation to their injured workers. To find out the true nature of your employer’s non-subscriber vs workers’ comp status, you will need the help of an experienced San Antonio work injury attorney.

In many cases where employers did subscribe to workers’ comp coverage, policy limits prevent victims from securing adequate damages to compensate for the injuries they’ve suffered. However, that doesn’t mean the victim must go without due compensation. Often times, negligent third parties help cause the accident and compensation can usually be pursued from them. To stand the best opportunity of receiving the fair and equitable restitution you deserve after a workplace accident, you need to hire a trustworthy lawyer with years of familiarity handling similar cases. San Antonio work injury attorney Michael Grossman and his associates at Grossman Law Offices have been handling personal injury and wrongful death cases involving on-the-job accidents for over 20 years, and we’ve earned the knowledge to deliver the settlement or verdict that you deserve.

What is Workers’ Compensation Insurance, and Why Does it Safeguard Employers from Lawsuits?

Workers’ compensation might technically be insurance, but it differs dramatically from any other standard insurance policy, like the one you have on your car. Workers’ comp insurance was created when lobbying by businesses led to tort reform to shield employers from workers who have been injured on the job and then sue their employers. Even though workers’ comp policies are provided by private carriers, a state managed fund supplies the benefits. The law doesn’t require employers to carry workers’ comp insurance either. They have the option paying for the protection afforded by workers’ comp insurance or taking their chances without it.

All injured employees of subscriber companies will be paid workers’ comp benefits no matter who was to blame or how they were injured. However, the amount of compensation offered through a workers’ comp claim in Texas seldom adequately covers the amount of damage inflicted because workers’ comp policies place limits on the maximum recoverable compensation. When this happens, subscriber employers are still immune to lawsuits to recover the difference between the policy and the injuries inflicted. That doesn’t necessarily mean you must foot the bill for the difference. An experienced work injury lawyer in San Antonio, TX knows how to find and sue negligent third parties whose errors helped cause the accident and the worker’s injuries.

For instance, scaffolding collapses, falling on a construction worker and breaking both of his legs. While benefits are limited by the workers’ comp policy, the defective nature of the scaffolding caused the accident and the injury. To receive adequate damages, the injured worker can file a product liability lawsuit against the manufacturer of the faulty equipment. If you have been seriously injured and you fear that your employers’ workers’ comp coverage will not compensate you for the full extent of the damage, options may be available to you against liable third party just as in this example.

Many employers, particularly in dangerous professions like construction, mining and oil, are used to facing personal injury claims, and they know how to weasel out of them. Some will even pay fake workers’ compensation benefits in order to trick their injured employers into thinking they don’t have the right to sue. At Grossman Law Offices, our attorneys will diligently conduct a thorough investigation to discover the true non-subscriber vs workers’ comp status of your employer.

What Benefits Can You Receive Through Workers’ Compensation Insurance?

After being hurt at work, you have the right to receive up to 70 percent of your income for work missed as a result of complications from the injury, but the law places a cap on these damages at $600 per week. For instance, a welder who makes $60,000 per year and is injured on the job is only eligible for $600 per week from workers’ comp insurance until returning to work. If the permanent disability results from the accident, then the welder will only receive $600 for the rest of his or her life, despite the fact that the actual wages lost are over $800 per week. When the worker has recovered, he or she also receives a lump sum payment, but it tends to be quite small.

Workers’ compensation claims also fail to take into account lost future earning capacity caused by long-term disabilities. If a man permanently disables his hands while working as a construction worker to put himself through medical school and fulfill his dream of being a surgeon, then he will only receive 70 percent of his wages as a construction worker, and not the salary of the surgeon he would have eventually become, consequently losing millions of dollars, potentially, over the remainder of his life.

Can you see the critical importance of seeking the help of an experienced work injury lawyer to protect your rights? You have the right to sue for more damages, if your employer is paying you the minimum benefits in an effort to pretend to have workers’ compensation insurance. Any limitations of legitimate workers’ compensation coverage can also be offset by suing a negligent third party that may have caused your accident, either in whole or in part. No matter what the details of your accident, nor who was to blame for it, the work injury specialists at Grossman Law Offices will help you get the fair compensation to which you are entitled by devising and proving a comprehensive lawsuit.

What Action Can be Taken Against Non-Subscribers?

If you panicked when you found out your employer didn’t have workers’ compensation insurance, remain calm. In the long run, this can sometimes benefit you more because a much wider array of damages are pursuable in personal injury lawsuits against non-subscribers due to efforts by the Texas Legislature to encourage employers to purchase workers’ comp coverage. You have the right to pursue compensation from non-subscribers for:

• Medical expenses.
• Physical pain and suffering resulting from the accident and the injuries.
• Property damage.
• Mental or emotional distress caused by overcoming the injuries and fighting through rehabilitation.
• Lost wages during recovery time.
• Reduced earning potential in the future caused by crippling disabilities.

The Sole Proximate Cause Defense in Nonsubscribing Work Injury Cases in Texas

Non-subscribing employers are left with only one option to shirk paying compensation to employees who are injured on the job – proving that the employee caused the injury with his or her own negligence. Since this is the only option, virtually all non-subscribers attempt to take it, spending large amounts of money on defense attorneys who do whatever they can to suggest the employee’s gross negligence led to his or her own injuries. Say for example, you work in a meat packing plant, and you injure your hand while working on the assembly line, scraping fat and grizzle off of steaks. Your employer will likely complain that your negligent job performance led to the accident and the injury you suffered. At Grossman Law Offices, we will employ our professional investigators to prove your injury resulted from negligent training, supervision or equipment. We’ve even won a case with those exact same details by using the company’s own employment manual to prove our client had been improperly instructed to perform his job. The only way to prevail with such an injury claim is to build knowledge and skill of legal liability through extensive practice with other cases. Our work injury attorneys can prove your employer’s liability and protect your right to equitable restitution because we have the necessary experience. No matter what your employer’s non-subscriber vs workers’ comp status, Grossman Law Offices will do whatever is possible to help you get the damages that you’re owed for the injuries you’ve suffered.

Establishing the Employee-Employer Relationship

To avoid work injury lawsuits before accidents even occur, many employers hire their workers as contractors in name. Employers are not required by the state of Texas to provide contractors with safe working conditions. According to this state, only employees may file work injury claims and not contractors or temporary employees. On the other hand, the laws of the state of Texas might consider you to be an employee even if you were hired as a contractor and are named as such in the contract you signed with the employer. Previous rulings in other cases, known as case law, help to decide in the eyes of the law whether or not a worker is a contractor or an employee.

Our attorneys are able to help our clients who thought they were contractors prove the existence of an employer-employee relationship, enabling them to receive the workers’ compensation they deserve for the injuries they’ve suffered. The simplest way to demonstrate this fact is a signed contract stating the worker is an employee. Sadly, life is seldom that simple. Still, the employer-employee relationship can be proven through other means, such as:

• If the worker labors for only one employer, then that worker is an employee, while he or she would be a contractor if juggling jobs for several companies or individuals.
• If the worker receives hourly, weekly, monthly or yearly salary, then he or she is an employee. Contractors are workers who are paid on a job-by-job basis.
• If the worker’s labor is overseen by a supervisor on a regular basis, then the worker is an employee. For contractors, employers generally don’t view the work done until the project has been completed.
• If the employer supplies tools and equipment to the worker, then that worker is an employee. Contractors, on the contrary, supply their own tools and equipment.
• If the worker is expected to meet a schedule supplied by the employer, then the worker is an employee. Whereas, contractors can determine their own schedules to complete projects.
• If the employer removes social security or income taxes from the workers’ paycheck, then that worker is an employee.

When one company loans workers or hires out temp workers to another company, the status of employment of these workers is determined by certain conditions:

• If the borrowing employer has the right to hire or fire the borrowed worker, then that temp worker is an employee.
• When borrowing employers request a specific worker, then he or she is considered an employee. On the contrary, workers who are selected by the lending agency are contractors.
• If the lending agency has the option of sending out a substitute worker for another worker, then both workers are contractors. However, if it can’t send a sub without authorization from the borrowing company, then the worker is an employee.
• When the borrowing company supplies the borrowed worker with the necessary tools, then he or she is an employee. Borrowed workers who bring their own tools are contractors.
• When companies borrow workers for an indefinite amount of time, then that worker is considered to be an employee. When the borrowing period is established for a given period of time or a certain amount of work, then the worker is a contractor.
• Workers are considered to be employees when the borrowing company pays income or social security taxes. If such taxes are paid by the lending agency or if income taxes are left up to the worker, then the worker is a contractor.

San Antonio Work Injury Accident Lawyer Michael Grossman Can Help You Today

If all of this information is getting a little overwhelming, then don’t feel bad. Now you can likely see why you need a skilled work injury attorney to help you navigate through the complicated process to secure the damages you deserve. Even when cases are won and lost by little-known facets of law, our attorneys can overcome the limitations of workers compensation insurance by suing negligent third parties. When deadbeat employers try to avoid their duty to pay for the injuries of their employees, our attorneys know how to pick apart their meager defenses. We’ll unveil the truth if your employer is trying to fool you or lie to you about its non-subscriber vs workers’ comp status. Before talking to the insurance company, accepting a settlement from the company for which you were working or pursuing your own lawsuit, you must consult a knowledgeable attorney or you ma be doing irreparable harm to your case. The work injury specialists at Grossman Law Offices are here any time for a free at 1-855-393-0000.

Clients have come to us after repeatedly being rejected by other law firms. We’ve taken their cases and have secured compensation for them. Recently, a client met with eight different attorneys before coming to us, and they all turned down his case because he had been hired as a contractor. We were able to establish the employer-employee relationship and help our client receive the compensation he was owed.

Our work injury specialists at Grossman Law Offices have spent the past 20 years doing everything in our power to help injured workers secure the compensation they deserve, and that experience enables us to know how to assist you as well. We’ve taken on nearly every major insurance company in the country, including many renowned work injury defense lawyers. Our impressive track record often only makes it easier for our clients to negotiate with insurance agents and defense lawyers. Once they’re aware of the prospect of facing off against our lawyers, insurance companies often present our clients with sizable settlement offers, enabling them to return to normalcy with as little additional strain as possible. However, if the opposition won’t negotiate in good faith, then we’re happy to take them to court and make them pay. We’re devoted to taking whatever action is best for our clients. Pick up the phone and call the trial-tested attorneys at Grossman Law Offices if you have been injured, or a family member has been killed, in an on-the-job accident in San Antonio. Our legal professionals are on call and waiting to discuss the specific details or your case or explain any legal concept you don’t understand, including the intricacies involved in the differences between non-subscriber vs workers’ comp claims.