Work injuries in Garden City, Long Island are possible in many different type of situations, and they can range in severity from minor inconveniences to major, life-altering injuries. If you were injured at work in Garden City, you should consider taking your case to an experienced work injury lawyer.
Our work injury attorneys can help you file lawsuits against at-fault parties to seek compensation. This often means suing a third party rather than being able to file a lawsuit against your employer directly.
For help with your case, contact The Carrion Law Firm. For a free case review with our work injury attorneys, call (718) 841-0083 today.
Suing for Work Injuries in Garden City, NY
There are some limitations on your right to sue after a work injury. Often, lawsuits against an employer are restricted unless certain conditions are met. However, you might be able to sue some other third party for your injuries.
For any party to be held liable for a workplace accident, there must be proof that they violated a legal duty that they owed you and that that breach of duty was what caused your injury to occur. This can stem from something complicated like a third-party inspector who performed a negligent check on a piece of equipment you use for work or something as straightforward as a drunk driver crashing into a roadside work crew.
For a lawsuit to issue against an employer, you typically must show that they were negligent and that they violated some specific statute. Often, statutes like New York’s Scaffolding Law are used for this purpose. That law specifically allows lawsuits against employers for gravity-related injuries, such as falls from scaffolds and ladders.
If these conditions are not met, you could be entitled to sue another party for your work injuries. The two examples above – suing an inspector and suing a negligent driver – are only two of the possibilities. These lawsuits are also commonly filed against equipment manufacturers who negligently designed safety gear or machinery that you use at work. The manufacturer could also be liable for manufacturing errors that caused the product to be defective.
In any case, it is important to have our work injury lawyers review your case to determine which parties could be liable.
Damages for a Work Injury in Garden City, NY
The core purpose of any lawsuit is to set things right and to restore the victim – as much as possible – to the condition they were in before the accident. This is usually accomplished by paying them back for any expenses the injury caused them, such as medical expenses. The lawsuit should also compensate them for any money they missed out on because of the injury or will miss out on going forward, such as lost wages and lost earning capacity. Lastly, there are areas of compensation for things that cannot be restored or set right, such as pain and suffering damages to reimburse you for the physical pain of an injury or the mental suffering that comes with an injury.
Calculating Common Areas of Damages
As such, these three examples are the most common damages claimed in an injury suit: medical expenses, lost wages, and pain and suffering. However, not every case focuses on all three elements equally.
In some injury cases, you might face expensive surgeries or hospitalizations for your injuries but recover quite fully. Other times, your pain might be minimal, but the injury results in a disability that keeps you from returning to work at your previous capacity and interferes with your day-to-day activities. In any case, it will be important to have one of our work injury attorneys review your case, help calculate damages, and fight to get these damages compensated at their full value.
Often, Workers’ Compensation insurance is available at your job to pay for some of these injuries. However, it is unlikely to cover your full damages because that insurance covers only a percentage of your lost wages and does not pay for pain and suffering. Take your case to our work injury attorneys rather than trusting that insurance system to take care of you.
Calculating Punitive Damages
In some cases, punitive damages are also available. These damages are rare and are used to punish the defendant for what they did wrong rather than to reimburse the victim. Punitive damages can typically only be claimed in situations where the defendant committed serious negligence that they should have known was wrong or where the defendant has already faced repeat legal issues from the same conduct and failed to desist.
Talk to our work injury lawyers about whether these damages are available in your injury claim. Note that these damages are typically not paid in settlements or through insurance payouts and are typically awarded specifically by a court after a full trial.
How Our Garden City Work Injury Lawyers Can Help
If you were injured at work, there may be layers of legal questions you now face:
- Will I be fired if I can’t work?
- Can I afford my medical treatment?
- Who pays for my emergency care?
- Will Workers’ Compensation apply to me?
- Will I be able to go back to work?
- Who will take care of my family if I can’t work?
These questions and more are exactly the kinds of questions that our work injury lawyers deal with in nearly every work injury case we handle. Moreover, we can help collect evidence, build a strong case, and fight your case all the way to trial if necessary.
Call Our Garden City Work Injury Attorneys for a Free Case Review
If you or someone in your family suffered serious injuries at work, call the Garden City work injury lawyers at The Carrion Law Firm for a free review of your potential work injury case. Contact us at (718) 841-0083.