Workers’ compensation insurance scheme shields employers from most lawsuits arising from workplace accidents. However, it does not protect third parties against legal action if their negligence contributed to or led to your injuries.
For instance, if a defective product leads to your workplace accident, you can take action against the manufacturer. Similarly, you can hold a negligent driver legally liable if they caused a crash and you got injured while on a work-related errand.
It means you can recover compensation from third parties, separate from your workers’ compensation benefits. Below is more on what you need to know if a third party was involved in your workplace accident.
The elements of a third-party injury claim
Third-party injury claims are not like workers’ compensation claims because they’re personal injury claims. That means you must prove the third party owed you a duty of care, and that they breached that duty through negligent, reckless or willful behavior, causing your injuries. You must also show that you suffered damages due to the third party’s negligence. It could be the medical expenses you incurred, lost wages and even the pain and suffering you endured.
You may be entitled to a wider range of damages
While a personal injury claim against a third party can be complicated, you can recover more damages through a civil claim than what workers’ compensation benefits offer. These include damages like loss of your property plus compensation for your emotional anguish, pain and suffering.
If a third party fully or partially contributed to your workplace accident, seeking legal guidance is essential. As mentioned, it’s a whole different rule book for such claims, and it helps to understand and protect your legal rights from the word go.
Was your child injured by an attractive nuisance?
As summer gets underway, most kids will have a lot of time on their hands to wander the neighborhood and beyond. That means getting into some potentially dangerous situations. Kids are natural explorers, and they often don’t pay attention to what is someone else’s private property.
What if your child is injured on someone else’s property. Is the property owner liable even if they were there without permission?
Under North Carolina law, most people on someone else’s private property are either considered invitees or trespassers. In most cases, property owners aren’t responsible when trespassers are injured on their property – unless they’ve done something intended to harm trespassers, like set a booby-trap.
Children, however, generally aren’t considered trespassers because they can’t always be expected to understand the concept. Further, if there’s a feature or object on the property that’s just too tempting to resist (an “attractive nuisance”), a property owner may be considered liable if the child is harmed by it. They’re expected to either remove it or take appropriate steps to prevent children from being able to access it.
Common attractive nuisances
Typically, when people (and insurance companies) think of attractive nuisances, the following come to mind:
- Pools
- Playground equipment (like swing sets and trampolines) and treehouses
- Water features (including man-made ponds, fountains and wells)
- Construction projects, including the dangerous equipment and toxic substances that often accompany them.
- Weapons
Firearms, of course, need to be locked up, along with ammunition. Too many tragedies have occurred because children couldn’t tell the difference between a real gun and a toy one.
Discarded appliances and unlocked cars (especially older ones that don’t have safety latches inside the trunk) can also prove dangerous if left outside and unattended.
Proving liability in an attractive nuisance case
Proving that a property owner should be held liable for having an accessible attractive nuisance generally requires demonstrating the following:
- There was a potentially dangerous condition.
- The property owner knew or should have known it could attract children and could harm them.
- The condition was either created or maintained by the property owner.
Every situation is somewhat unique based on the child’s age, the attractive nuisance and how the child accessed it. That’s why if your child suffered harm, it’s best to seek legal guidance to give you the best chance of successfully seeking justice and compensation.
When someone suffers a brain injury, the focus is often on immediate treatment to save their life. For instance, someone who has bleeding around their brain could suffer cell death if the pressure on the brain becomes too great. Surgery can help to relieve this pressure and reduce the scope of the injury.
But it’s also important to think about the long-term effects of a traumatic brain injury (TBI). There are many ways that this condition can change a person’s life, perhaps forever. For instance, it could lead to the onset of depression and/or anxiety.
A very serious condition
Depression is a very serious medical condition. It can dramatically change a person’s life, and it can impact what they’re able to do. As noted by researchers who published a paper in the National Library of Medicine: “Depression can limit the ability to return to work, and even worsen cognitive function and contribute to dementia.”
It’s more than being sad or feeling down. It’s a change to the way the brain functions on a fundamental level. For some, this means they lack motivation, and may even stop engaging in things that they once found fun and enjoyable, like their hobbies. For others, it means they struggle to communicate with other people or work with a team. For still others, they may have long stretches of time when they’re virtually unable to care for themselves and/or suffering from harmful thoughts.
Personality changes
Depression is just one of the ways in which a person can change after a brain injury. Family members sometimes note other types of personality changes. Maybe the person is always irritable and combative, rather than kind and accommodating. Maybe they now struggle to remember details that would’ve been easy for them to hold onto before. All of these other changes can simply make their feelings of depression worse because they know what life was like before the injury.
In a situation this serious, those who have been injured may benefit from considering their legal options. They may have the ability to seek financial compensation from any party that was responsible for their harm. Seeking legal guidance can, therefore, potentially be very helpful.
How can counting to three help keep drivers safe?
When you drive, you share the road with many others, and keeping a safe following distance at all times is crucial. The problem is that many drivers have no clue how far that is.
The simplest method to calculate a safe following distance is to count three seconds.
Why does this work?
All vehicles need a greater stopping distance as their speed increases. Counting to three avoids you having to try to guess the actual distance to stay behind another vehicle in feet. The faster you travel, the greater your three-second gap automatically becomes (provided you stick to it).
Is three seconds always enough?
You should treat it as an absolute minimum for good conditions. That means good road conditions, good weather conditions and when you are in good mental condition yourself.
If the road surface is loose or wet; if visibility is poor due to fog or rain or if you are feeling tired or have a heavy cold, then you should increase how many seconds you count.
Another reason to increase the distance is concerts about the driver in front
Sometimes you get a bad feeling about a driver in front of you. Perhaps you see they are using their phone as they drive. Or perhaps you notice they are driving a bit erratically. In this case, the safest option is to drop back, as if they are distracted, drunk or something else, then they may brake late because they fail to notice a hazard or red light.
Unfortunately, you always run the risk that a driver behind you does not keep a safe distance. If they hit you from behind then you’ll likely need to find out more about your legal options.
Why should drivers slow down when it’s raining?
While summer brings warm weather to North Carolina, it can also bring some heavy thunderstorms. That can create problems for drivers.
Slowing down is wise if it starts to rain heavily or has just finished raining heavily. Here is why:
Falling rain reduces visibility
Sometimes the rain falls so thick and fast that it can be hard to see out of your windshield. It’s going to be the same for every other driver out there. Motorcyclists will struggle to see out of their visors and pedestrians or cyclists may have their hoods up and their heads down as they rush for shelter. So, all in all, the chances of a crash increase.
Rain on the road can also reduce traction, especially after a dry spell when it washes off all the accumulated grease and oil from the road surface. It means stopping distances increase drastically, so the best way to counter that is to slow your speed.
Puddles can cause hydroplaning
Sometimes a puddle is deeper than expected, and that can cause you to lose traction altogether and hydroplane across the surface of the water. Your vehicle might veer off in the direction of the oncoming traffic as a result.
Even if you don’t hydroplane, carrying too much speed into a deep puddle can send a huge plume of spray up, making it hard for you or anyone passing you in the opposite direction to see.
While slowing down for water seems obvious, some drivers don’t. If they injure you, you’ll need to find out how to hold them responsible.
Does the color of your vehicle matter?
One of the first things many people do when dreaming of a new vehicle is to pick the color. For example, they want a yellow motorcycle or a black car.
Indulging your personal preference is fine, but it pays to know that the color of your car can also affect your safety. Here’s what you should know:
Lighter colors help you stand out
Maybe you’re the kind of person who prefers to blend into the background than grab the attention. That’s fine, but when it comes to safety, standing out from your surroundings reduces your risk of injury.
A lot of crashes happen because a driver did not see the other vehicle. Making your vehicle hard to miss increases the chances they spot you. That doesn’t mean you need to go for fluorescent paint, but it does suggest you think twice before selecting certain colors. White and yellow cars are good choices for visibility.
Fire trucks are red, so that must be a good choice, right?
Wrong. While red was the color of choice for fire trucks for years, research shows it’s a poor choice because “the human eye is red-blind at night.” That could make your choice of a red car particularly dangerous after dark.
Black and other dark shades are also risky choices
You wouldn’t be alone if you think black cars look cool. However, lying in a hospital bed because someone didn’t spot your car is definitely not cool. Try to avoid darker shades because they blend into the background of a cityscape or road at night.
Staying visible still won’t ensure all drivers spot you as some may be too drunk or too distracted to pay attention to any vehicle, of any color. If that happens you’ll need to learn more about claiming fair compensation for your losses.
Last June, much of North Carolina experienced dangerously hot temperatures and the chances are they will happen more frequently.
Many people fail to pay enough regard to the dangers hot days present. Among them are some employers who expect their workers to continue as normal when the temperatures rocket.
Employers have a duty to provide a safe working environment
Here are some of the things employers should do:
- Ensure workers have access to enough drinking water and time to drink it regularly.
- Provide shade where possible.
- Allow sufficient breaks, especially through the hottest parts of the day
- Accept that production may have to suffer in the name of health
- Train and instruct supervisors on how to monitor workers for signs of heat-related illness
Obviously, some employers won’t do enough. That could lead to workers experiencing any of the following:
- Heat stroke: This is when the body’s temperature rises above 103 Fahrenheit and it requires urgent medical intervention.
- Heat exhaustion: This can cause people to vomit, feel dizzy or pass out and may require a day or more off to recover
- Heat cramps: These could be even more problematic for anyone with a heart condition.
- Sunburn: This can beyond a little redskin and leave lasting scarring.
One of the major problems with prolonged heatwaves is that many workers are not able to recover before returning to work the next day. Those without air conditioning in their homes, will not get the relief that those with it do. Hence their bodies do not get a break from the stress the heat causes them.
So while they may fall ill at home or on the weekend, the week of work in heat may have been what led to it. They may need help to tie their illness to their workplace to claim compensation.
Retail work, long hours and lower back pain
Some workers stand for prolonged hours, and a good example is retail workers. They move around aisles, helping customers find payments, processing their payments and answering questions, among other duties. Hence, they have to stand for extended periods.
This can easily lead to lower back pain for a lot of retail workers — even young ones. Here is how this can happen:
Stress on the back muscles
When you stand for prolonged hours, your lower back pain will be stressed. This can strain the muscles, resulting in pain. Additionally, when your back is stressed, your lumbar vertebrae may experience pressure, hence the pain.
Inflammation in the spine
Each vertebra in the back is separated by discs filled with jelly, which act as a cushion. Standing for too long can inflame these discs and cause wear and tear. Further, standing for prolonged hours may also inflame the veins in your spine, making them immobilized.
Factors that worsen the condition
While you may get back pain from standing for too long, some factors can worsen it. These include:
- Poor posture
- Being inactive after work
- Poor mattress
Your employer should provide a reliable schedule that allows you to rest. They should also permit you to sit when customers are not around. However, managing the factors mentioned above can also help you.
Unfortunately, back pain has been normalized among retail workers as “part of the job,” but this is simply not true. If you’ve started to suffer work-related back pain because you’re required to stay standing for long stretches of time, you have every right to seek workers’ compensation.
Warehouse workers should be aware of these risks
Even before the rise in delivery to consumer doors, warehouses provided work for many people. Now they provide jobs for even more. As with any job, they are not risk-free, and one workplace accident could damage your ability to make a living, either temporarily or for good.
Employers must make their employees aware of the particular dangers they will face while working. Here are some they should tell you about if you work in a warehouse:
Vehicles
Whether it’s forklifts or delivery trucks, vehicles are crucial to the functioning of warehouses. Yet, vehicles and people on foot do not mix well. Employers must designate clear routes for both pedestrians and drivers that avoid each other wherever possible. Vehicles should have sounds that alert workers to their presence and drivers must be properly trained.
Machines
Machines have replaced humans in many aspects of warehouse work, yet they’ve not done so entirely. The intersection between the two presents a grave danger for workers, so once again, employers must take adequate steps to protect their safety. This can include making certain there are guards on machines, certain “no-go” areas for humans and secure power cut-off options for those who need to clean or repair machines.
Overwork
Some warehouses have a reputation for overworking their workers and refusing to give them adequate breaks. Drinking and eating are crucial, as is rest, and tiredness makes injury more likely. Long-term work in warehouses also presents the possibility of repetitive strain injuries which can last for years.
Workers’ compensation should be available if you suffer injury due to any of the factors above, yet you may need legal help to get the full amount you are entitled to receive. If your workers’ comp claim isn’t producing results, it may be time to learn more.
You can experience hearing loss after a car accident
Hearing loss or deafness can be described as the total inability to perceive sounds. While this condition can be caused by aging, prolonged exposure to loud noises and ear infections, it can also be caused by trauma from a car accident.
After a car accident, you might experience physical discomfort in your ears, ringing and hearing loss. There are different ways a car accident can result in hearing loss, and it is crucial to be aware of them. Below are some of the ways a car crash can cause hearing loss.
Head trauma
Head injuries are common injuries people experience after a car accident. Injuries like traumatic brain injuries and concussions might occur when your head hits an object in the car, like the windshield or steering wheel.
These forceful impacts can damage the inner parts of your ear, like the membranes, tissues and hair cells. Head trauma can also cause eardrum rupture, disrupt cochlea flow and cause minor bone injuries in the mid-ear.
On the other hand, a strong impact can cause the skull to fracture, and the resulting pieces of bones can pierce the inner ear causing hearing loss.
Whiplash
Whiplash is a neck injury caused by a quick back-and-forth movement of the neck. This condition is common in rear-end collisions. Unfortunately, depending on the impact, the rapid movement of the neck can damage the inner ear and result in hearing loss.
Airbag deployment
Airbags are intended to save lives during an accident. Unfortunately, when deploying, these cushions create loud pressure sounds that can instantly damage your inner ear. The loud sounds during the deployment can cause tinnitus and physical discomfort in your ear. In addition, when the airbag hits your head straight, you might experience broken ear bones resulting in hearing loss.
Experiencing hearing loss after an auto accident can be a devastating thing. The treatments can be complicated and lengthy, and you might need to wear hearing aids or undergo surgery. Don’t hesitate to seek medical attention and legal guidance, especially if someone was responsible for the accident.
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