Cathedral City Work Injury Attorney
Thousands of people working in the Cathedral City area must drive for work, and it’s vital for every driver to not only know the risks they face on California roads but also what they need to do to recover from any work-related vehicle accident. While most workers are covered by their employers’ workers’ compensation insurance, many may wonder whether this coverage would still apply to an injury suffered outside of their workplace. Additionally, if a third party outside of your work caused an injury, you may have more options for legal recourse than you expect at first.
Experienced Legal Representation for Work Injury Claims for Car and Truck Accidents in Cathedral City, CA
A Cathedral City work injury attorney is an ideal asset to have on your side in this situation. The right legal team can make every aspect of your recovery process easier to manage and more likely to generate the results you hope to see. When you choose English Lloyd & Armenta to represent you, you will have a responsive advocate and source of guidance readily available to address your concerns throughout all stages of your case.
Benefits of Hiring a Cathedral City Work Injury Attorney
The attorneys at English Lloyd & Armenta have years of experience handling a wide range of workers’ compensation claims in Cathedral City, including those pertaining to motor vehicle accidents. We have successfully helped many past clients recover from their work-related car and truck accidents, and this process often entails more than one insurance claim followed by a personal injury claim. Your recovery process following a work-related vehicle accident may seem straightforward at first, but it’s important to know the challenges you could face as you seek compensation and the benefits of working with a Cathedral City work injury attorney in these proceedings.
Our team will take time to learn as much as possible about you, your work duties, and the situation that led to your injury. We develop client-focused legal strategies for each client we represent, taking the time needed to address each client’s unique concerns and goals for their recovery efforts. We have confronted many large insurance carriers for our clients, and we know the tactics they often use to try to avoid liability for legitimate claims; we also know the methods they use to try to justify the lowest possible settlement offers.
Even if you think your claim is straightforward and your employer has fulfilled their legal obligations to you in your workers’ compensation claim, you could face unexpected challenges that you will not know how to resolve efficiently on your own. By hiring an experienced Cathedral City work injury attorney, you can approach this process with peace of mind. You are significantly more likely to maximize your total compensation of your workers’ compensation claim and the outcome of a subsequent personal injury claim when you have experienced legal representation you can trust.
Understanding the Workers’ Compensation System
Almost every private employer in the state is legally obligated to carry workers’ compensation insurance. The purpose of this insurance is to provide financial security to both employees and employers. For employers, this insurance prevents a covered employer from facing civil liability for an injured worker’s damages. Insurance pays for the injured worker’s medical expenses and a portion of their lost income following the injury. For employees, workers’ compensation benefits provide a valuable financial cushion that helps them through recovery until they are able to return to work.
Workers’ compensation insurance functions just like most other types of insurance. An employer pays a monthly premium to maintain their coverage, and the price of their premium typically depends on the perceived level of risk their insurance carrier assesses. For example, a business that primarily employs office workers and a business that handles construction are both legally required to have workers’ compensation insurance under California law. However, an insurance provider is likely to consider the construction company to have a greater level of risk due to the inherent dangers of construction work. Therefore, the construction company is likely to have more expensive insurance premiums due to this higher level of perceived risk.
When a worker suffers an injury while performing their job duties, they can file a claim for workers’ compensation benefits through their employer. The employer is legally required to document the injury in an incident report and provide the injured worker with the materials needed to file their claim. Employers are prohibited from interfering with claims or refusing to provide claim-filing materials to injured workers. They may legally dispute a claim, but if they engage in any unlawful retaliation, they face severe legal penalties.
It is generally ideal to file your claim as soon as possible after an injury at work. If you take too long to file your claim, the insurance carrier might assume that because you did not file the claim immediately, your injury could not be as severe as you claim. You should report your injury to your supervisor immediately and then reach out to an experienced Cathedral City work injury attorney who can help you file your claim.
How to File Your Workers’ Compensation Claim for a Vehicle Accident
A workers’ compensation claim is functionally similar to any other type of insurance claim, but the claimant faces an additional complication in the form of their employer’s role in the filing process. While most employers in Cathedral City handle work injury claims in good faith and facilitate their employees’ claims for benefits, this is not true for every employer. After reporting your injury to your employer, an experienced attorney can guide you through the next steps of the claim-filing process.
Work-related vehicle injuries impose additional complications for injured workers, however. For example, you must follow the steps you would take after any other vehicle accident. This means recording as much as possible from the scene of the crash, if possible, and seeking medical care immediately. Remember that the site where your injury occurred does not necessarily matter for the purposes of workers’ compensation as long as you were performing your job duties when the injury occurred.
If you are severely hurt in a work-related vehicle accident, you should wait for first responders to offer medical attention. If you feel well enough to move, do so carefully and try to record as much as you can from the scene of the crash. Take photos of your injuries, the damage to your vehicle, the positions of the vehicles involved in the accident, and other nearby landmarks. Recovering from the accident may require not only a workers’ compensation claim but also a claim against the at-fault driver’s personal auto insurance policy, and these photos could be invaluable for both of these claims.
Your employer should not only provide you with the forms you will need to fill out and submit to their insurance carrier but also a list of local physicians you can visit for your disability rating. You can see any available doctor if you need emergency care, but a formal evaluation from a workers’ compensation doctor is usually a prerequisite for a determination of benefits. This doctor will review your injury and assign a disability rating based on the overall severity of your condition. The higher this rating, the more you could potentially secure in benefits.
Pursuing Additional Compensation for a Work-Related Injury Claim
Workers’ compensation benefits can be invaluable to any injured worker, but it is important for them to remember that workers’ compensation benefits alone may not fully cover the total cost of a work-related injury. Additionally, you typically cannot pursue a civil claim against an employer in response to a workplace injury unless they intentionally caused your injury somehow. However, you could have grounds for a civil suit against a third party if someone outside of your work caused your injury. This is often the case when it comes to work-related vehicle accidents.
If you were driving as your primary job duty and suffered an accident caused by another driver, you have grounds for a workers’ compensation claim because you were working when the accident happened. However, you could then file an auto insurance claim against the at-fault driver just as you would after any other vehicle accident. The state requires every driver to have personal auto insurance that includes at least $15,000 in bodily injury liability coverage for a single person, at least $30,000 in total accident liability coverage, and at least $5,000 to cover property damage, such as vehicle repair costs.
After a serious accident, auto insurance alone may not fully cover a victim’s damages. However, the combination of your workers’ compensation claim and an auto insurance claim against the at-fault driver could significantly enhance the overall recovery you secure for your damages. Your Cathedral City work injury attorney can guide you through both of these insurance claim-filing processes, resolving any issues you encounter with insurance carriers along the way until you obtain as much compensation as possible for your damages.
Building a Third-Party Personal Injury Claim for a Work Injury in Cathedral City
Unfortunately, vehicle accidents can potentially inflict life-changing injuries, and insurance alone may not cover the extent of your losses. In the event that you have exhausted your recovery options through workers’ compensation and an auto insurance claim against the at-fault driver, a personal injury suit could enable you to recover the rest of your claimable damages.
Before you can proceed with claiming compensation from the at-fault driver, you must prove how they caused your accident. A few of the most common causes of work-related vehicle accidents and other vehicle crashes in the Cathedral City area include:
- This is one of the most commonly cited contributing causes of accidents in the Cathedral City area and a leading cause of fatal vehicle crashes. Whenever a driver speeds over the posted speed limit, they endanger themselves and others. When an accident happens because of speeding, the at-fault driver could face reckless driving charges along with a civil suit from the other party they injured.
- Distracted driving. Inattentive driving is a leading cause of all vehicle accidents in the United States each year. A few seconds of distracted driving is more than enough to cause a devastating crash, and proving distracted driving may require obtaining another driver’s cell phone records, securing traffic camera or CCTV footage, and obtaining eyewitness statements from those who saw the accident happen firsthand.
- Driving under the influence (DUI) of alcohol or drugs. It is illegal for anyone to operate a motor vehicle while intoxicated, and the penalties for DUI conviction include driver’s license suspension, heavy fines, and jail time. When a DUI accident harms another person, the defendant faces increased penalties.
- Traffic violations. Unfortunately, some drivers fail to follow posted traffic signals or yield the right-of-way where necessary. If any type of traffic violation caused your recent work-related vehicle accident, you may need traffic camera footage and other evidence to prove fault for the incident. Running red lights and stop signs, performing illegal turns, and failing to engage turn signals where necessary are a few of the most commonly cited moving violations in Cathedral City.
No matter how your recent work-related vehicle accident happened, proving fault for the incident is an essential first step in succeeding with a personal injury claim against the at-fault driver. Your attorney can help you gather the evidence that will be needed to prove liability, and once you have identified the at-fault driver, secured as much as possible through workers’ compensation, and resolved an auto insurance claim against the at-fault driver’s policy, you can proceed with filing your personal injury suit against the at-fault driver.
Damages Available in a Personal Injury Claim
The main objective of any personal injury claim is for the plaintiff to recover as much compensation as possible for their damages. To accomplish this, the plaintiff needs to identify the defendant responsible for their damages, prove the full extent of those damages, and then prove that those damages would not have manifested if not for the defendant’s negligence or misconduct. California’s personal injury statutes enable plaintiffs to seek full repayment of all economic losses a defendant caused, which may include:
- Vehicle repair costs. If you were driving a company vehicle in your accident, your employer may handle pursuing a claim against the at-fault driver for repair or replacement of the vehicle they damaged. However, if the accident happened while you were driving your own vehicle for work, you can seek compensation for repair or replacement costs with your personal injury claim if the at-fault driver’s auto insurance does not fully cover these losses.
- Medical expenses. Because your injury happened while you were working, your workers’ compensation claim will likely yield full compensation for any medical care you require to fully heal from your injuries. However, if you need specific medical treatments that your employer’s workers’ compensation insurance policy does not cover, you can pursue compensation for medical expenses from the defendant who injured you. Their auto insurance policy’s bodily injury liability coverage may compensate for these losses, but any remainder not covered by insurance can be sought through your personal injury claim.
- Lost income. A successful workers’ compensation claim may yield disability benefits that offset your lost earning power after a work-related vehicle accident. However, workers’ compensation typically only pays a percentage of your usual earnings in disability benefits. Any lost income and lost future earning power that you cannot recover through auto insurance can be included in your personal injury claim. If you have a seasoned Cathedral City work injury attorney representing you, it is possible for you to recover much more than you might expect, especially if the defendant’s actions resulted in any permanent loss of earning capacity.
The average personal injury plaintiff may be surprised to learn the true potential value of their claim after they secure legal counsel. While the average person should be able to calculate immediately recognizable losses like their hospital bills and vehicle repair costs, the assessment of long-term damages like lost earning capacity is more complex.
Cathedral City Car Accident FAQs
Q: How Long Do I Have to File a Workers’ Compensation Claim in Cathedral City?
A: There is a one-year statute of limitations for workers’ compensation claims, meaning you need to submit your claim to your employer’s insurance company no later than one year following the date of your injury. This might sound like plenty of time, but the reality is that it is always preferable to file your claim as soon as possible after an injury. This prevents the insurance carrier from doubting the truth of your claim due to the time it took you to file it. As a general rule, you should report any work-related injury to your supervisor immediately and consult legal counsel you can trust to guide you through the claim-filing process.
Q: What Is My Work-Related Vehicle Accident Claim Worth in Cathedral City?
A: It’s natural to wonder how much you could potentially secure in benefits, and many variables can potentially impact the final outcome of your case. Your Cathedral City work injury attorney is your most valuable asset when it comes to maximizing the compensation you obtain from your employer’s workers’ compensation insurance policy. If you pursue a third-party personal injury claim, the case award could enhance your recovery even further.
Q: What Happens if I Was Partially at Fault for My Vehicle Accident?
A: Fault does not necessarily influence a workers’ compensation claim in most cases. As long as the injury happened from an accident made in good faith while performing your job duties, you should not be disqualified from workers’ compensation benefits. However, if you were working under the influence of alcohol or drugs, intentionally violated workplace safety regulations, or were injured through horseplay at work, these factors may disqualify you from workers’ compensation benefits. If you bear partial fault and intend to pursue a personal injury claim, however, your percentage of fault is deducted from your final case award under the state’s pure comparative negligence rule.
Q: Do I Need to Hire an Attorney for a Work-Related Vehicle Accident Claim in Cathedral City?
A: You are not obligated to hire legal representation for a work-related vehicle accident claim in Cathedral City. You have the right to pursue a workers’ compensation claim on your own, but you must acknowledge the risks you would face in doing so. You may make mistakes in filing your claim that lead to delays in processing, or you may reach an impasse with an insurance company representative that you do not know how to resolve on your own. If you pursue a personal injury claim, you may succeed without an attorney, but you would risk settling for less than you rightfully deserve. Having an experienced attorney represent you increases your chance of maximizing the results of your recovery efforts, and you can rest and recover with peace of mind while your attorney manages your legal affairs.
Q: How Much Does It Cost to Hire a Cathedral City Work Injury Attorney?
A: It’s understandable to be concerned about the potential cost of legal fees when you are already facing economic losses from your accident. However, this is no cause for alarm when you choose English Lloyd & Armenta to represent you. Our team can accept your case on a contingency fee basis, meaning you will only pay a fee after we secure compensation on your behalf. Additionally, this fee will be a percentage of the total amount recovered, and you will keep the rest. If, for any reason, English Lloyd & Armenta is unsuccessful with your claim, you pay no legal fees to our firm.
Ultimately, any work-related injury has a chance of imposing life-changing complications on the victim and their family, and this is especially true for vehicle accidents. Resolving the various insurance-related issues and pursuing a personal injury claim would be very challenging on your own, so it’s ideal to have legal representation you can trust if you want to maximize the results of your recovery efforts. Contact English Lloyd & Armenta today to schedule a free consultation with a Cathedral City work injury attorney to learn more about the services we provide and how we can bolster your recovery efforts after a work-related vehicle accident.
Stalled Serious
Injury Cases
We specialize in reviving and closing stalled workers’ comp cases on your behalf.
Workers’
Compensation
We work hard to get you the proper medical care and full benefits you deserve.
