Industrial Accident Legal Services

Key Takeaways

The federal safety law and the injury claim are two different things. Federal law sets a safety duty for covered employers, but it does not itself decide what an injured worker receives. For an injured worker, that means the question "Was the workplace unsafe?" and the question "What happens now?" are answered by different bodies of law.

• Under 29 U.S.C. § 654(a), each employer the Act covers must furnish each of its employees "employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm," and must comply with the safety standards issued under the Act.
• Under 29 U.S.C. § 653(b)(4), the federal safety law does not "supersede or in any manner affect any workmen's compensation law," and it does not enlarge, diminish or otherwise affect the existing rights, duties or liabilities of employers and employees for injuries, diseases or death arising out of employment.
• Workers' compensation rules differ by state, and this page does not state any state's rule.
• Limitation periods, fault rules and damages rules for civil claims also differ by state.
• When someone other than the employer may have contributed to the harm, such as the maker of a machine or the company that serviced it, a civil claim against that party is a separate question from workers' compensation.
• This site covers injuries in warehouses, factories, distribution centers and plants. Construction sites, oil and gas work, offshore injuries, burns and asbestos matters are outside its scope.

No single rule tells an injured worker or a family what options exist. The answer depends on the state and on the facts: what failed, who controlled it, who made it and who maintained it. Many families find it useful to write down those four things, even roughly, because almost every later question turns on them.

If the Workplace Was Unsafe: What Federal Law Expects of Covered Employers

The Occupational Safety and Health Act sets out what is often called the general duty. Under 29 U.S.C. § 654(a), each employer the Act covers has two obligations. The first is to provide a workplace free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm. The second is to comply with the occupational safety and health standards issued under the Act. OSHA's own page describes this as the General Duty Clause, which "requires them to keep their workplaces free of serious recognized hazards." The Act does not reach every employer. Whether a particular employer is covered depends on the facts and on the Act's own definitions.

For an injured worker, the general duty is a floor. It describes the minimum the law expects of a covered workplace. It is not, by itself, a finding that anyone did anything wrong. Whether a safety failure played a role in an injury is a factual question that turns on what the hazard was, whether it was recognized and what was done about it.

OSHA's Worker Rights and Protections page states that "federal law gives you the right to work in a safe place" and that "your employer must keep the workplace free from known safety and health hazards." The page lists rights including the right to:

• receive safety training in a language you understand;
• work on machines that are safe;
• receive required safety equipment;
• request an OSHA inspection and speak to the inspector;
• report an injury or illness and get copies of your medical records; and
• review records of work-related injuries and illnesses.

OSHA also states that it is illegal for an employer to retaliate against a worker for complaining to OSHA. According to OSHA, a worker who believes they were retaliated against for using their rights under OSHA's whistleblower protection laws "can file a whistleblower complaint within 30 days of the retaliation." For a worker who is worried about raising a safety concern after an injury, that protection and its short window are part of what is at stake.

Under 29 U.S.C. § 653(b)(4), none of this changes workers' compensation law or the existing rights and duties of employers and employees for workplace injuries. In plain terms, the safety statute tells covered employers how to run a workplace. It does not create a new injury lawsuit, and it does not take one away. For you, that means a safety violation, if there was one, does not by itself decide what benefits or claims are available.

What a person may want to weigh at this stage is whether the hazard was one the workplace knew about. Equipment that had malfunctioned before, a guard that had been removed or a complaint that had already been raised all bear on that question. A conversation with an attorney can help a worker or a family think through whether a safety failure may connect to the injury, and to whom.

If You Were Hurt on the Floor: Work Settings and Hazards This Practice Covers

These cases usually begin in one of four places: a warehouse, a factory, a distribution center or a manufacturing plant. The setting matters legally because it shapes who controlled the space, who owned the equipment and who was responsible for maintaining it.

Several kinds of hazards appear again and again:

• Forklift and other powered industrial truck incidents, including tip-overs, pedestrian strikes and loads that fall from the forks. The site's page on warehouse accident lawyer issues covers these settings in more depth.
• Caught-in or caught-between injuries, where a hand, arm or body is drawn into machinery, pinned between moving parts or crushed. This includes machines that start unexpectedly during cleaning or repair, which the site's page on lockout/tagout failures addresses.
• Conveyor and assembly-line hazards, such as pinch points, unguarded drives and jams cleared while the line is running.
• Racking and shelving collapses, where stored loads come down on workers in an aisle.
• Struck-by incidents, from falling objects, swinging loads or moving vehicles.
• Falls, from loading platforms, mezzanines, ladders or elevated work areas.
• Loading dock incidents, including trailers that move during loading and gaps between dock and trailer.
• Equipment failures, where a machine, part, sensor or safety device does not perform as it should.

The workers affected are the people who keep these buildings running: production workers, warehouse associates, material handlers, maintenance workers and quality-control staff. A maintenance worker hurt while servicing a machine and a picker hurt in an aisle face different questions, about who controlled the equipment, whether it was locked out and whether a safety device was in place.

The injuries can be severe: fractures, crush injuries, amputations, traumatic brain injuries, spinal injuries and, in the worst cases, death.

If you are trying to understand your own accident, the most useful starting point is usually the mechanism: what moved, what failed or what was missing. That one detail often determines which legal theory is in play and which parties are worth asking about. An attorney can help match the mechanism to the parties it points toward.

If Someone Besides Your Employer May Be at Fault

Many families reasonably wonder whether anyone besides the employer can be responsible at all. This matters because, as noted above, the employer's workers' compensation coverage and a civil claim against another party are separate questions, so the employer's coverage may not be the whole picture. The answer depends on what happened. Potential defendants, described here by type only, include:

• the operator of the facility, meaning the company running day-to-day work there;
• the owner of the property, when that is a different company from the operator;
• the manufacturer of the equipment involved;
• the manufacturer of a component, such as a sensor, guard, brake or control;
• the seller or distributor that placed the equipment into commerce; and
• a maintenance contractor hired to service, repair or inspect the equipment.

Different legal theories apply to different parties.

Premises liability is the duty a property owner or operator owes to people on the property. It concerns how the premises are kept and whether dangerous conditions are addressed. If the building's owner is not your employer, this theory may come into play, for example over a racking system or dock the owner was responsible for.

Product liability is the legal responsibility of a manufacturer, seller or distributor for a defective product that causes harm. The law generally asks whether the product was defective and whether that defect caused the injury. Being hurt on a machine does not prove that the machine was defective. Whether a defect existed is a question of evidence.

Negligence is a failure to use reasonable care. If a maintenance contractor's repair work is at issue in your accident, this is the theory most likely to apply. A negligence claim generally asks four things: whether the party owed a duty of care, whether it breached that duty, whether the breach caused the injury and whether there were damages. The general duty under the federal safety law describes what a covered employer must do; how a safety standard relates to a civil claim against any party is a question of state law.

More than one party may share responsibility. For a worker or a family, the picture cannot be filled in without knowing who designed, sold, owned and serviced what was involved, and that is often what an attorney helps sort out first.

What to Gather After an Industrial Injury: Records That Often Matter

After an industrial injury, the paperwork can feel like a second job. It comes when the person hurt may not be able to drive, and the family is managing appointments. If you were hurt, the records that usually matter include:

• Medical records and treatment documentation, from the emergency room through surgery, therapy and follow-up visits, along with work restrictions. These show the injury and how it affects work.
• Photographs and video from the scene, including images of the equipment, the area, warning signs or guards and the conditions that day.
• The equipment, product or vehicle involved, along with its make, model and serial number, and whether it was kept, altered or returned to service. This bears on any product liability question.
• Incident and employer injury reports, including the version prepared by the employer and any statement the worker gave.
• OSHA inspection or citation records, where they exist. OSHA's worker rights page notes that workers can check an employer's OSHA inspection history and review records of work-related injuries and illnesses.
• Witness names and contact information for coworkers, supervisors or contractors who saw the incident or the conditions before it.
• Maintenance logs and inspection records for the equipment, which may show what was serviced, when and by whom, and so bear on a contractor's role.

Injured workers and families often gather these in one folder so the dates, names and reports can be lined up against each other. The condition of the evidence matters. A machine that has been repaired, or a report that leaves out a detail, can change what a claim is able to show.

Not every record carries the same weight in every case. For a forklift tip-over, the truck's maintenance history may matter most. For a caught-in injury, it may be the guard and lockout records. Talking with an attorney can help a person understand which records bear most directly on what happened to them.

Injuries and Damages These Cases Can Involve

The injuries in these cases are often life-altering. They include fractures, crush injuries, traumatic amputations, traumatic brain injuries, spinal cord injuries and internal injuries. When an accident is fatal, the family may face a wrongful death claim. Wrongful death is a civil claim brought by surviving family members when a person dies as a result of another party's conduct.

Damages are the categories of loss the law may allow in a civil claim. Depending on the state and the facts, they can include:

• medical expenses;
• lost wages;
• loss of earning capacity, meaning the reduced ability to earn in the future;
• pain and suffering; and
• loss of consortium, meaning the loss of companionship and relationship a spouse or family member experiences.

The nature and severity of an injury affect which of these categories are at issue. A fracture that heals raises different questions than an amputation or a brain injury that ends a career. This page states no amounts, and none can be predicted from the type of injury alone.

If you were partly at fault, for example by clearing a jam or stepping into an aisle, the state's fault rule matters. Under comparative fault, responsibility is divided among the parties based on each one's share, which can reduce what an injured person recovers. Some states instead follow contributory negligence, an older rule that can bar recovery when the injured person is found at fault at all. Damages rules, comparative fault standards and wrongful death rules all differ by state, including who may bring a wrongful death claim and what losses it may include.

For a family, the medical picture and the legal picture develop together. Records of how an injury affects work, daily life and the future are part of what the law may consider.

Why the State Where the Injury Happened Shapes Your Legal Options

State law decides most of an industrial accident claim. The rules depend on the state and the facts, and no state's rule is the rule everywhere.

For you, the most time-sensitive of these rules is the statute of limitations, the deadline by which a civil claim must be filed. Each state sets its own limitation periods, decides when they start to run and sets its own exceptions. The fault rule your state applies, comparative fault or contributory negligence, also varies. So do damages rules, including whether certain damages are capped, wrongful death rules, including who may bring the claim, and workers' compensation rules.

For a worker in a plant or warehouse, the same accident can raise different deadlines and different questions depending on where it happened. A national page like this one cannot tell any reader which deadline applies to them. Which state's law governs can be an early question in its own right, especially when the employer, the equipment manufacturer and the maintenance contractor are based in different places from the workplace.

You may want to consider writing down where the accident happened, the date, and where each company involved is based. If you would like to talk through which state's rules may apply to an accident like yours, you can request a case evaluation.