Articles Posted in Workers Compensation

Getting in an auto accident while on the job in Maryland can be the worst of both worlds.

As if a car or truck accident isn’t stressful enough, when a traffic crash occurs while you’re on the road for a Maryland employer — it’s easy to feel pulled in multiple directions at once. There’s the hassle of dealing with insurance companies, auto body shops, doctors, and lawyers. Throw in a company car or even your own car used for business, and then bring your employer (and all that potential drama) into the mix, and it’s no wonder accident victims get quickly overwhelmed.

Let’s say you’re driving to a sales call at a company in Baltimore City. All of a sudden, BAM! You are sideswiped at a downtown Baltimore intersection. The knee-jerk reaction if you’re involved in a work traffic accident is to call the boss immediately. Makes sense, right? Wrong!

In Maryland, work-related injuries make the news from time to time, particularly when a serious construction accident or accident on the loading docks of the Baltimore waterfront occurs. Slip and fall accidents from roofs and scaffolding, and crane, forklift, truck and other construction vehicle accidents are all hazards that come with the job in the construction and longshoreman trades.

As Baltimore work accident injury attorneys, we’ve assisted many hard-working individuals in Maryland who’ve been injured on the job. But one type of workplace injury we hear less about — which can have serious, lifelong consequences — is eye injury. The National Safety Council reports that eye injuries in the workplace are on the rise. According to advocacy group Prevent Blindness America, some 2,000 people sustain eye injuries at work every day.

The organization is offering free tools to employers to help raise awareness of eye safety and eye health among employees (see link below). Prevent Blindness America cites the most common causes of workplace eye injuries are flying objects (e.g., pieces of metal or glass), tools, particles, chemicals, and harmful radiation. Of the 2,000 people who sustain eye injury at work yearly, some 10 to 20 percent will suffer temporary or permanent vision loss. Computer related eye strain is another common form of eye injury in the workplace.

Last fall, we posted a blog article on the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) preliminary results for its 2008 census of fatal occupational injury rates. The BLS recently released its final numbers, which were slightly higher than originally reported based on identification of new cases of work-related injuries and deaths. The final data offer the following insights regarding worker safety in the U.S.:

o A total of 5,214 work fatalities occurred in the U.S. in 2008 — the lowest number of work-related deaths since the BLS began conducting its census in 1992. This represents a national fatal work injury rate of 3.7 per 100,000 full-time equivalent (FTE) workers.

o Private industry construction accidents causing death have declined (975 deaths in 2008 — 19% lower than in 2007); and the fatal work injury rate for this sector is down by 10%. However, even with these notable statistical gains — which translate to lives saved — construction remains one of the most hazardous forms of work, with a 9.7 fatal work injury rate (per 100,000 FTE workers).

Construction work in Maryland often involves long hours, hard labor, modest wages, and job security that’s entirely dependent on the season, the market, and the employer. As experienced Baltimore, Maryland Construction accident attorneys, we’ve represented many clients over the years who were injured while performing their construction jobs. One question we get asked all the time is…

“Can I file a claim under Maryland Workers’ Compensation and a lawsuit against the at-fault party (or parties) at the same time?”

The answer is YES. However, as with most things legal, there are many factors to consider.

A career site’s list of the best and worst jobs for 2010 reveals something Baltimore County work accident attorneys have known right along: The physically most demanding jobs are also the most dangerous and can lead to serious personal injury, lifelong medical problems, and even death.

Recognizing the risk to life and limb when construction accidents occur, job search site CareerCast.com ranked construction as the no. 8 worst job to pursue this year. The no. 1 worst job was “roustabout,” which includes oil rig and pipeline workers, followed by lumber jack and iron worker. The site considered the following factors while conducting research to rank the jobs: Environment, Income, Outlook, Stress and Physical Demands.

Construction Worker made the list due to the physical demands, higher rates of injury, and low median income, though the hiring outlook is “moderate.” And Maryland, while our stevedores (dock workers) weren’t in the bottom 10 jobs, they weren’t far behind — stevedores ranked 185 out of 200 jobs analyzed, with a hiring outlook of “poor” (besides the challenging work conditions if you can get a job as a dock worker on the Baltimore and Maryland waterfront).

What would you guess are among the most dangerous jobs in Maryland? Construction? Roofing? Electrical work? You’d be right on all those counts, but some of the top causes of fatal occupational injuries in Maryland may come as somewhat of a surprise. According to the U.S. Dept. of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), of the 59 people who lost their lives due to work-related accidents in Maryland in 2008…

> Transportation accidents (which include air, rail, highway transportation including freight trucking accidents, nonhighway transportation, and being struck and killed by a vehicle, e.g., construction site worker pedestrian accidents) accounted for 17 deaths;

> 9 fatalities resulted from Assaults and Violent Acts (including self-inflicted injury);

During the course of our work as Maryland and Baltimore County injury lawyers over the last two decades and counting, we’ve met so many nice families and individuals who needed our legal help to get through some very difficult situations. Often it’s because they went out one day and through no fault of their own, they got injured — or killed — in a traffic accident.

Other times, the cause of their injuries, or even their death, is due to medical malpractice. And in those types of personal injury cases, the cause is often not as clear cut as in auto accident or Maryland work accident cases. It is not always a single event that caused their injuries, disabilities, or wrongful death.

Medical malpractice or negligence often occurs as the result of the poor judgments and/or ill actions of more than one professional, over time, possibly at more than one institution. It can be a complex sequence of events leading up to a patient not being cured or helped, but instead, being permanently harmed. It can involve prescription error, surgical error, misdiagnosis or failure to diagnose, and failure to provide standard levels of care.

The Baltimore County City Council passed an act concerning speed cameras designed to thwart motor vehicle accidents and pedestrian accidents that occur in school zones. Bill 61-09 Speed Monitoring Systems, which went into effect Oct. 1, 2009, authorizes county law enforcement, in consult with other agencies, to use and enforce citations issued by speed monitoring systems in school zones.

The bill defines “speed monitoring systems” as “a device with one or more motor vehicle sensors producing recorded images of motor vehicles traveling at speeds at least 12 miles per hour above the posted speed limit.” Drivers will be subject to a $40 fine. An amendment to the bill limits the number of cameras to 15. The one councilor who dissented felt that more police — not speed cams — was a better way to address the problem.

In addition to the county bill targeting speeders in school zones, a separate state law now allows speed cameras at work zone sites; two have been placed in Baltimore County — one on I-695 at Charles Street and another on I-95 between I-895 and White Marsh Blvd.

People get hurt at work in the course of performing their jobs, whether it’s unloading cargo on the docks at the Port of Baltimore, working on a factory floor, or performing white collar jobs in downtown Baltimore office buildings. As Maryland Workers Comp lawyers who’ve served the people of Baltimore County and neighboring communities for decades, we’ve seen a wide spectrum of work-injury cases as a result of everything from heavy lifting to heavy typing.

Fact of the matter is, while certain occupations — construction, for example — are more hazardous than others, you don’t have to fall off scaffolding or have an accident as such to suffer injury as a result of your work. We can break down types of work related injuries into two broad categories: Accidents and Occupational Disease. We’ve discussed what to do if you are injured in an accident at work (see our Workers Compensation webpage for more, as well as our Work Comp blog archive). Let’s discuss occupational disease here.

Maryland Law & Occupational Disease / Work Related Injuries

Last month, we blogged about why employers sometimes discourage injured workers from filing a Workers’ Compensation claim in Maryland (see “The Top 3 Reasons Employers Tell Injured Workers Not to File — And Why You Shouldn’t Listen to Them,” June 8, 2009). Now, let’s look at why documenting your injury and seeking immediate medical attention — coupled with consulting an experienced attorney who knows the system — is so important to your future well-being.

“Causal Connection” and the Maryland Workers Comp Two-Year Limitation

If you’re hurt at work, the good news is you have two years to file a Work Comp case in Maryland. However filing and winning are two different things. Let’s say you bang your knee at work, it swells up, and you go to the emergency room. Your employer says, “Oh God, don’t file a work comp claim, I’ll pay your medical bills and give you some time off.” Doesn’t sound like a bad offer at the time, and you accept.

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