Injured on the job? Time to call a lawyer to protect your legal rights

By Dean I Weitzman, Esq. on May 19th, 2011

Every day, many thousands of workers are injured on the job in the U.S. and require medical treatment or hospitalization.

And when those injuries occur, many times workers aren’t adequately covered by insurance or cared for by their employers.

They are injured and then their legal rights aren’t protected because they don’t have someone who is looking out for them as their personal legal advocate. Insurance companies and employers don’t want injured victims to secure legal advice and counsel.

But that’s exactly when you need to bring in a caring, compassionate and skilled attorney to ensure that your injuries are properly treated, that your income isn’t adversely affected and that your legal rights are completely protected.

It happens all the time to workers in factories, stores, mines and a myriad of other workplaces.

The 29 coal miners who died April 5, 2010 in an explosion in a Massey Energy mine in West Virginia perished due to problems and safety risks that were caused by their employer, according to a state report that was released today. The 120-page report, which was produced by a team of independent investigators who burrowed through mounds of records related to the tragedy, “echoed preliminary findings by federal officials that the blast could have been prevented if Massey had observed minimal safety standards,” according to a story today in The New York Times. The report “put the blame squarely on the owner of the mine,” the paper said. “The story of [the] Upper Big Branch [mine] is a cautionary tale of hubris,” the report concluded. “A company that was a towering presence in the Appalachian coalfields operated its mines in a profoundly reckless manner, and 29 coal miners paid with their lives for the corporate risk-taking.”

No one was looking out to protect them in that mine.

Sometimes workplace injuries occur through incidents that appear to be truly accidental.

Earlier this week, a tree trimming worker in Lancaster County died when he fell from the bucket of the cherry-picker truck that he was using to trim trees, according to an Associated Press story from the (Lancaster) Intelligencer Journal/New Era newspaper. The victim, a 40-year-old York man, “was working in the truck’s bucket, about 50 feet up, when a pivot on the bucket broke and he fell to the ground,” the story reported.

Outwardly, incidents like this appear to be a tragic accident.

But a skilled attorney can help get to the bottom of such a tragedy and find out critical details, such as the condition and maintenance records of the bucket truck and the training of the crew, to help a grieving family recover adequate damages for the horrors they are experiencing through the shocking death of their loved one. If a company didn’t adequately protect its workers and a terrible injury or death occurs, a skilled attorney can help make it right for a family that is left behind.

In Yakima, Wash., a company was fined $5,200 earlier this week in connection with a industrial blast last December that injured several workers inside a warehouse, according to a story in the Yakima Herald-Republic newspaper.

The explosion at the Hops Extract of America plant in Yakima occurred after several bolts were not properly installed on high-pressure equipment in the facility, according to a report from the state Department of Labor and Industries. One worker was critically injured and several other workers were treated and released for their injuries after the blast, according to the paper.

These kinds of incidents and injuries happen across the country to workers who simply came to work to do their jobs.

About 3.3 million workers were injured in workplace accidents in 2009, the last year that complete statistics are available, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). That’s down from 3.7 million injuries in 2008, according to the agency.

In addition, 4,340 workers died on the job in 2009, the last year that complete government statistics are available, according to the BLS.

All of these incidents and statistics serve as grim reminders that workers must have a legal advocate in on their side when they are injured in a serious workplace accident.

Here at MyPhillyLawyer, we have handled thousands of such workplace injury cases between the attorneys on our skilled staff.

We stand ready to talk with you about your case and your debilitating workplace injuries to help you recover and get back on your feet both physically and economically.

Let our broad experience and our caring, professional and expert legal staff work to help you and your family make your way through the legal challenges ahead as you heal.

When winning matters most, call MyPhillyLawyer.