You may not think the workers’ compensation is going to cover work silence or a fight that you are involved in at work, however this is sometimes wrong. You might be able to recover workers’ compensation benefits if you meet certain qualifications. An experienced workers’ compensation attorney, like one at Rispoli and Borneo PC, can tell you about your options.
Statistics About Injuries in the Workplace
The CDC says that around 20,790 workers in the private sector were injured in workplace violence, 71% of these people were female and 73% of them worked in healthcare or social assistance. When you are working with people that may have underlying conditions that they cannot control or may require medications that they are not taking to help with their underlying conditions and imposes, you might be prone to running into injuries due to violence from the people you are trying to help. Your workers’ compensation attorney needs to understand that your workplace can have violence, even if you work an office job.
Workplace Violence
You might be wondering what will disqualify your case from receiving compensation under workers’ compensation law, if you are injured due to workplace violence. The injury in question has to arise out of and in the course of your employment, so if a customer attacks you then you would be covered, if a patient attacks you would be covered. However if you start a fight with another coworker you would not be covered. If you are otherwise deemed to be engaged in shenanigans you would not be covered, or it could be difficult to obtain workers’ compensation.
If you are hoping to file a successful workers’ compensation claim after being injured on the job by a patient or client, you and your attorney are going to have to show that you are not the one that started the fight. It doesn’t matter if a customer where a coworker verbally provoked you, if you threw the first punch when you are denied your benefits.
Another disqualification could be if you are intoxicated at the time of the injury, and the employer is going to try to pursue an intoxication defense because they will argue that the sole reason for the injury was because you were under the influence of drugs or alcohol. However for your employer to prove that you are under the influence of something that would require blood or urine samples.
If you instigate a fight on company property during work, your workplace is going to be able to claim that you are provoking somebody else, and the injury did not arise from the conditions of your work but from a fight that you began. However there is an understanding that you can defend yourself following an altercation started by somebody else on the workplace property, and would still be eligible to receive workers’ compensation.
Reach out to a workers compensation attorney today if you have any questions.
