“Workplace accidents can have lasting consequences. Trust Carabin Shaw, your local Texas work accident injury lawyers, to handle your case with the attention and care it deserves.”

WORKPLACE ACCIDENT INJURY LAWYERS / WORKERS’ COMP

Defendants Will Certainly Charge you as Being the Sole Proximate Cause of the Accident.
Your workers’ comp non-subscribing employer is certainly not likely to suddenly change his or her nature and agree to pay you for the harm you’ve suffered due to that negligence. Our experience in these matters has taught us that most non-subscribers insurance companies (and their lawyers if it comes down to a trial) begin their defense with a couple of relatively predictable strategies to avoid paying injured employees the restitution they deserve. We’ve mentioned the sole proximate cause defense. To make an effective case, your opponents will add insult to your injuries and soil your reputation by charging you were a negligent employee and causing your injuries. They try to hold you alone responsible for them.
This is the first step of their besmirchment campaign. Your character comes into question: ‘When did you stop beating your wife? Did we see you selling drugs on the job site?’ Questions begin popping up. They have no shame (or aversion) to painting the wrong picture of you as they desperately try to wiggle out of paying rightful damages. So, in addition to your burden of proof, you and your attorney have an equally-important burden of dis-proof. Insurance defense lawyers know how close to the line truth and lie they can go without stepping over it, yet still make their sinister points against you. Your employer may have been too cheap to buy workers’ comp coverage. But you can be sure they will think nothing of paying tens of thousands of dollars to defend themselves. You need your cunning work accident attorney to place the spotlight back where it belongs, squarely on the negligent employer.

The Next Defense: Questioning the Existence of an Employer-Employee Relationship
The sole proximate cause defense has been thwarted. But there’s another defense trick awaiting you. Many clever employers begin avoiding liability even before accidents occur by trying to distance themselves from you as an employee and their responsibility to compensate you fairly. Some even start building that paper trail to prove their argument from the first day you show up for work. Texas employers are not liable for what happens to contractors vis-à-vis job site injury liability. So many companies will claim to hire their employees as contractors. By calling you a contractor, your employer believes it’s possible to deny that an employer-employee relationship existed between you and the company. Then they will tell you that you don’t have a legal claim to compensation for your injury-related damages. Their logic is simple: why should they be responsible for an injury to someone who was technically never their employee? While many companies try to claim they hire their employees as contractors or as temp workers through a third party, the business owner knows an actual employer-employee relationship exists in many of these cases. An injured worker can still obtain compensation. So don’t be discouraged by this ploy. Even though your employer initially claims you are a contractor, you are likely still considered an employee in the eyes of the law; and entitled to recover financial compensation for injuries suffered on the job. A skillful and well-seasoned workplace employee injury attorney knows how to prove the employer-employee relationship by meeting at least one of the following standards and often proves more than two:

Social security and withholding taxes have been deducted from your paycheck by your employer.
Your employer supplied the essential equipment for the job.
Your employer has regularly managed, overseen, or inspected your work.
A specific work schedule has been set for the job by your employer. You are not free to come and go from the workplace as you, please.
Your employer requires you to complete a task or sign a document that limits your rights while working for the employer. The most common examples are taking a drug test or signing a document that states you comply with an employee handbook.
You have been employed for an undetermined period, not just for a single job.
A salary or an hourly wage pays you not on a job-by-job basis.

In cases where a worker is borrowed from another company, or a third-party agency, the rules for determining the working relationship are related, but there can be some crucial differences. These conditions may include the following:

If the borrowing employer can hire or fire a borrowed worker at any time, the worker is an employee. Otherwise, the worker is a
contractor.
Most of the time, if the borrowing employer is allowed to pick a particular worker, the worker is an employee.
If the agency that provides the worker is allowed to send any worker they choose, the worker is a contractor.
If the worker must provide them, that person is a contractor.
If the employer offers them, the worker is an employee.
The worker is a contractor if the employment agency can substitute the borrowed worker for another.
If the lending agency cannot, then the worker is an employee.
If the worker is borrowed indefinitely, then the worker is an employee.
If the worker is borrowed for a specific project with a completion date and no further, the worker is a contractor.
If a worker is being borrowed or “leased” because of a unique or hard-to-find skill, then the worker is a contractor.
On the other hand, if an employer borrows a worker to fill a position that just about anyone can supply, then the worker is an employee.
If the borrowing employer agrees to pay the worker’s social security and income tax, the worker is an employee.
The worker is a contractor if the borrowing employer does not accept this responsibility.

Our Law Office conducts a thorough investigation to demonstrate at least one of these standards and prove an employer-employee relationship existed between you. We will depose co-workers, review contracts and examine pay stubs to establish that you were an employee when you suffered an on-the-job injury. A couple of other important things: if you were hired by an employment agency to work at an “employer’s” company and suffered a workplace-related injury or accidental death, your attorney must determine if the employment agency has workers’ comp. If so, you would file a workers’ comp claim against the agency, which would make the company where you performed the work a third-party contributor to the accident and subject to the full extent of civil law. Also, suppose your employer loaned you to another company where the accident occurred. In that case, the issue of a workers’ comp subscription with your employer comes to mind, and the company where you suffered your injury will likely be treated as a third-party defendant in any civil claim or suit. Or maybe they’re both non-subscribers, so there are no civil restrictions.This brings another important point to mind. Workers’ comp claims are less than adequate when major injuries include wrongful death. So the traditional way for an employee to recover fair damage compensation is to file a workers’ comp claim against the employer of record (assuming that the employer subscribes) and then supplement the claim with the appropriate number of third-party claims or lawsuits. Finally, sometimes employers will deduct that Social security and withholding taxes and then put the money in their pocket, then try to claim an employer/employee relationship did not exist. They change their tune if we ask if the IRS will back them up. Then they change their tune quickly. They know that we’ll know that truth in less than five minutes. Some people: and another benefit delivered by an experienced workplace injury lawyer.

More great blogs on Work Injury Law – Workers Comp here:

https://www.devineandfanning.com/contact-fatal-work-accident-attorneys/
https://www.nancysearerattorneyatlaw.com/is-my-employer-a-workers-compensation-insurance-subscriber/
https://www.prestilaw.com/workers-compensation-what-can-i-do/
https://www.bethkrulewitch.com/workers-compensation-osha-cannot-help-you/
https://www.nbalawblog.com/workers-compensation-what-is-a-contract-employee/
https://www.jdavidmarkham.com/frequent-problems-in-nonsubscriber-work-injury-cases/
https://www.clarkbyarlay.com/workers-compensation-non-subscriber-employers/
https://www.lawofficeofkarenross.com/workers-compensation-law/
https://www.sainilawyers.com/workers-compensation-attorney/
https://www.hensleylawteam.com/legally-pursue-damages-arising-from-an-injurious/
https://www.ftlauderdaledefense.com/workers-compensation-non-subscriber-lawsuits/
https://www.fastinjuryclaims.com/the-complexity-of-workers-compensation-insurance/