Personal Injury, Worker’s Comp, or Both?

If you’ve been injured while at work, you may wonder, “Do I have a workers’ compensation injury or do I have a personal injury?” Well, you may have both. My name is Griffith Tonkin, and here at Arthofer & Tonkin Law Offices, we offer free consultations on personal injury matters. So give us a call, and we will help you work through those issues. Some of the issues that you’re going to be facing are as follows if you’re working and you’re injured on the job, but it’s just as a result of the job you were doing where the injury was caused while at work or was caused by a co-worker, you probably have a workers’ Compensation only plan. There’s an exclusive remedy rule here in California, where if you’re injured on the job, your remedy is the Workers’ Compensation system, and You need appropriate workers’ compensation counsel. That’s not us, but we can connect you with great global practitioners who can help you through your work comp case.

Now, if you’re injured while at work but are injured by a third party, somebody outside of your employer, you probably have both the Workers’ Compensation and a personal injury case. Let me give you an example. Say you’re driving your vehicle or a company vehicle for work purposes and you’re involved in an automobile accident, you have both a workers’ compensation case and a personal injury case if that accident was caused by a third party that is not a co-worker, not someone associated with your employer’s business. In that instance, you have both cases, and you probably need two lawyers. It’ll be important that your personal injury lawyer, like us, coordinate closely with your workers’ compensation attorney to make sure that your cases are handled in a way that best benefits you, regardless of what’s best for the attorneys. You’re the client. You’re what’s most important.

So if you’ve been injured on the job and you’re wondering if you had both a personal injury and Workers’ Compensation case, give us a call. We’ll help you work through that issue, we will connect you with an appropriate attorney on the work comp side, and we will handle the personal injury case and get you a result that you deserve to get you back on your feet, get you back to work, and back to life. Thanks for your time.