Embarrassed By Your Work Injury?
Have you ever been injured at work but were too embarrassed or afraid to report your accident to management? Or to file a workers’ compensation claim?
You are not alone. You would be amazed at how often workers (just like you) are injured at work but feel they have embarrassing workers’ compensation cases or are too scared to take action. This results in them missing out on the workers’ compensation benefits they are entitled to.
Why Are Workers’ Embarrassed Or Scared?
There are a number or reasons for this. It may be that the employer intimidates the employee into not filing a claim. They could do this by threating to fire them or threatening to cut their wages/hours.
In some cases, the employee could be too scared or embarrassed to claim workers’ compensation because they may have caused the injury themself. This was exactly the case with a previous client who waited to report their injury to their boss and to file their workers’ compensation papers. But remember: Workers’ compensation is not about finding who is to blame. It’s purpose is to protect injured workers’.
What Happened?
Our client was a union laborer. One day in the course of his work he accidentally hit himself forcefully on his wrist. He was so embarrassed by his self-inflicted injury that he didn’t tell anyone.
He was also making good money as a laborer and was afraid to file a claim as he didn’t want to miss work. He continued to work the pain, until the pain became too unbareable, which was 5/6 weeks later. At this point he told his boss about his injury.
The Case
As our client had waited over 5 weeks to tell his boss about his injury, his boss disputed the claim. This meant the case had to go to trial.
Our client was found to have a significant fracture in his wrist and needed emergency surgery. We got him the medical treatment he needed while waiting for the case to go to trial.
The Result
At trial our clients claim was successful. Not only were his medical costs covered, he was also paid for lost time, was provided with lifetime insurance coverage for his wrist and was awarded a total of $48,985.81.
These were workers’ compensation benefits he was entitled to, but could have missed out on if he had not filed a claim.
