Florida Construction Accident Lawyer Near You

At Abrahamson & Uiterwyk, we help construction accident victims in the greater Tampa area fight for fair compensation. In many cases, construction workers will have two ways to seek compensation. The first is a claim for workers’ compensation: As an employee, you are entitled to limited “no-fault” benefits from your employer. The second is a claim for personal injuries: If someone other than your employer was to blame, our construction accident attorneys can help you seek full compensation for your injuries and losses.

1. Workers’ Compensation Benefits

Under Florida law, most construction companies are required to provide workers’ compensation benefits to employees who get hurt on the job. As we mentioned above, these are “no-fault” benefits, which means that your employer has to pay regardless of whether it was to blame for your injuries.

However, securing workers’ compensation benefits is not as easy as it sounds. Employers don’t like to pay workers’ compensation benefits – paying means losing money, and it also means having a record of a job site injury. In addition, most companies cover the costs of workers’ compensation through insurance, which means that you will most likely need to deal with your employer’s insurance company in order to collect the benefits that you deserve.

For these reasons, if you have been injured on a construction site, it is strongly in your best interests to hire a job site injury attorney to assist you with your claim. An experienced workers’ compensation attorney will be able to deal with your employer and its insurance company for you – while helping make sure that you take all of the steps necessary to collect the benefits you deserve.

2. Personal Injury Compensation

In addition to filing a claim for workers’ compensation benefits, it is critical that you speak with a construction site injury lawyer about filing a claim for personal injury compensation. Why? Workers’ compensation does not provide full coverage for injured employees’ losses. Workers’ compensation benefits cover accident-related medical expenses and a portion of your lost wages, but they will not cover the wide range of other losses that often result from a serious construction site injury.

By filing a personal injury claim, you can seek full compensation for your:

Past and future medical expenses
Counseling, therapy, and rehabilitation costs
Lost wages and loss of future earning capacity
Pain and suffering
Loss of companionship and consortium
Loss of enjoyment of life
Other financial and non-financial losses resulting from the accident

Under Florida law, in most cases, workers’ compensation is the only remedy that you can seek from your employer. In exchange for the opportunity to receive “no-fault” benefits through workers’ compensation, employees lose the right to file personal injury lawsuits against their employers for additional compensation. But, on construction sites, in many cases there will be other parties that are to blame for accidents and injuries.

Examples of companies that may be fully liable for your construction accident injuries include:

Contractors
Property owners
Subcontractors
Tool, equipment, and machinery manufacturers
Trucking and shipping companies
Utility companies

When you contact us about your case, we will conduct a thorough investigation in order to identify all of the parties that are responsible for your losses.

In addition to handling personal injury claims, we also represent family members in cases of wrongful death. If you lost a loved one in a construction site accident, we encourage you to call so that we can help you seek justice for your loved one’s death.

Call us 24/7 at 800-538-4878 to get your FREE case review.

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Construction accidents can result from a wide range of factors. As a result, injured workers can often seek workers’ compensation benefits and file claims for personal injuries. While you may ultimately need to repay some of your workers’ compensation benefits if you receive a settlement or verdict in your personal injury case, filing both types of claims can help insure that you recover the money you need as quickly as possible.

Examples of issues that can entitle injured construction workers to file personal injury claims in Florida include:

Negligent supervision
Poor or insufficient training
Improper use or maintenance of tools and equipment
Defective tools and equipment
Misuse of tools and equipment
Crane, hoist, and harness-related accidents
Scaffolding accidents
Collapsed structures
Falling objects
Falls from high elevations
Slips and falls
Compressed gases
Toxic substance exposure
Electrical accidents
Welding accidents
Explosions and fires

According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, 952 workers were killed in construction accidents in 2021 alone, accounting for 18% of all of the workplace fatalities that occurred in the private industry that year.

Well over half of these fatalities were caused by four common types of accidents that some safety officials refer to as the “Fatal Four.” These types of accidents include falls, being struck by an object, electrocutions and being caught in or between various objects.

Falls are the leading cause of construction worker fatalities by far. Of the 952 worker fatalities that were reported in 2021, 370 were caused by slip, trip, or fall, accounting for 38% of all construction worker fatalities that year.
Being struck by an object is also one of the most common deadly accidents that occur in the construction industry. These type of accidents account for over eight percent of all construction-related deaths.
Electrocutions pose a serious threat to some construction workers. Electrocutions account for over eight percent of all construction-related deaths.
Getting caught in or between objects or obstacles also poses a danger to construction workers, accounts for over four percent of all construction-related deaths.

In all too many cases, tragedy could easily have been prevented if the proper safeguards had been in place. Unfortunately, employers continue to make the mistake of placing themselves and their workers at risk by failing to meet safety standards.

According to OSHA, some of the most common violations that are cited within the construction industry involve problems with fall protection and meeting general requirements for scaffolding.

Due to the fact that workers’ compensation claims are often highly complex and exceedingly fact-specific, our law firm commonly works with other law firms in and around Tampa that have considerable experience in these types of cases. As a result, we may refer your workers’ compensation claim to a separate firm with which we typically associate and work on a co-counsel basis.

The highly-experienced Florida personal injury law firm of Abrahamson & Uiterwyk provides:

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Florida Construction Accident Lawyer Near You