Have you been seriously injured on a work site? Check out these 4 construction accident tips, then call our Florida attorneys to get started.
1. Choosing a Construction Accident Attorney
The best answer to that is pick a lawyer who’s got experience, overall experience in personal injury cases and experience in the construction world. Construction cases are complex cases. You have multiple subcontractors on the job. You have your direct employer. All of those are treated somewhat differently depending upon the facts of your case. When you’re talking around, shopping around, ask the lawyer, how long have you been in practice? What percentage of your practice is personal injury work? Of that, what percentage of your practice is construction alone? How many cases? How much experience do you have in that area?
2. Case Value
Typically, if we get that question in the initial conference, we say we don’t know. The reason for that is a lot goes into valuing a case. The nature and extent of your injury, and in a construction accident case, who caused the accident? Was it your employer? Was it a subcontractor? Are you a subcontractor or are you an employee of the general contractor? Those are all very important questions that determine whether or not you can even make a claim, and if so, is it a strong claim? Is it a weak claim? These are things that we develop overtime, and ultimately, we do come up with a value range of your case. It takes time, particularly in construction cases, as they are complicated. It will take a good bit of time before we can arrive at a value of your case.
3. Suing Your Employer
They have some vague general notion of worker’s compensation and those types of things. In a straight case where someone is hurt on a construction site, they are the employee of the contractor and the general rule is you cannot sue your employer, but construction site cases are not as straightforward as other industrial type accident cases. It requires getting into the details or the facts, who may be responsible. While the general rule is you cannot sue your employer but on a construction site accident case, there may be other entities that you can sue.
4. Case Timeline
Particularly in our environment now with COVID-19, since all of our courthouses were closed, we have had a backlog of cases that are just now beginning to be processed in the different counties, Nassau County, Duval County, and the surrounding counties. We have developed a plan to move the new cases, move the old cases, but there will be delays. Under ordinary circumstances, we used to say it would take 9 to 14 months. Now it’s probably going to be longer than that. Eventually we will settle back to normal scheduling, but right now, you can expect your case in litigation probably to last a couple of years easily.
Have you been seriously injured on a construction site and have questions about these 4 construction accident tips? Contact an experienced Nassau County Construction Accident Lawyer at Paul Boone Law today for a free consultation and case evaluation.
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel