Workplace Injuries, Third Party Liability, and Employer Negligence
Posted by John Sedgewick - 31/07/11 at 09:07 pmIf you have suffered a serious physical injury at work, you will probably be entitled to wage benefits to help you through your period of disability and medical benefits for as long as you need medical care to treat your work injury. In most Maine cases, wage benefits are calculated as 80% of your post-tax average weekly wage. Similar calculations are made in most states, including our northern New England neighbors, New Hampshire and Vermont, although every state uses a slightly different formula. No injured worker gets lost income benefits that equal his or her take home pay, which is one of the reasons why being out on workers comp benefits is so hard on workers and their families.
One common question associated with workplace injuries is why an injured worker cannot sue an employer for negligence. In most states, employers are immune from basic negligence claims when an employee of the company is the injured party. This rule, which also bars suits against co-workers, dates to the early 1900s, when workers compensation statutes became law in most states. Before that, if a worker was injured on the job, he or she could sue the negligent employer. However, such claims had to be pursued through the courts just like every other personal injury claims. For at least two reasons, that approach does not work too well for injured workers. First, personal injury cases cannot be evaluated and should not be settled until the worker is fully healed. Healing can take years, and injured workers cannot wait that long to have their medical bills paid or to have an income. Second, personal injury claims filed in court are fault-based claims—the injured person must prove that the defendant’s carelessness caused the injury. In some work injury situations, it is not possible to prove that the injury was caused by the fault of the employer.
Examples of work injuries not caused by the fault of the employer abound, but some of the obvious ones are gradual injuries from repetitive motion, back injuries caused by lifting, and vehicle accidents caused by careless drivers who are not co-employees with the injured worker. In all of these cases, if there were no workers comp system, the employee would get nothing from the employer.
Another example of an injury caused by something other than the employer’s fault is a product liability claim based on a machine malfunction or product defect. Without the workers compensation system, there would be no medical payments or wage replacement benefits when an improperly filled gas cylinder explodes, when a saw blade or grinding wheel flys apart due to defects in manufacture, or when a vehicle transmission unexpectedly slips into gear. Ladder failure, chair failure, electric arcing from poor system design and mislabeled chemicals are all sources of work injuries where the employer may not be at fault. In such cases, workers comp benefits are an important lifeline for the injured worker and his family.
In some of these cases, such as those caused by negligent drivers and faulty products, it may be possible to get immediate assistance with medical bill and income replacement and to also pursue a case in court against the person or entity responsible for the injury. Such cases are known as “third party” cases because they are brought against someone other than a co-worker or the employer—someone remote enough under the law to be considered a third party.
Some cases are complicated by a combination of third party fault and a share of employer negligence. For example, if there is a defect in a transmission or punch press but the employer allows its use despite the problem, the employer might deserve some criticism and some blame for allowing the unsafe product to be used and thus contributing to the injury. It is in these cases that injured employees may legitimately ask, “How can they get away with this?”
The only answer to that question is the one mentioned above. When the workers comp system was set up about a hundred years ago, a basic trade was made. The employer gained immunity from a negligence suit, but took on the obligation to make immediate payments for lost income and medical payments. That legislative trade is not perfect, and it does not work out well in every case, but for most injured workers it is a far better arrangement than one in which the employer pays nothing if it is not at fault, and the employer pays only after being proven guilty of wrongdoing, which may not occur until years after the injury.
