If you do something to cause your own injuries, that injury involves just the first party – you. If someone who works with you – your boss, your supervisor, or a coworker – causes your injury, we could say that injury is caused by a second party. Third-party accidents at work involve someone who has no legal connection with your workplace injuring you, and these lawsuits often open different avenues to getting compensation.
Pennsylvania’s Workers’ Compensation laws prevent injury lawsuits for work-related accidents if you are filing against your employer. That means you usually cannot sue if you were hurt by a coworker or by your employer’s negligence – and you obviously cannot sue yourself for injuries. However, lawsuits against third parties can be filed, allowing you to get damages above and beyond the limits of what Workers’ Compensation can cover.
Limitations on Lawsuits Against Employers in Philadelphia
As mentioned, you usually cannot sue your employer for injuries at work. The law used to require you to sue your employer, but employers would point to legal principles and rules that often carved out exceptions, allowing them to dodge liability entirely. In many workplace accidents, you are also the one who caused your own accident, meaning there is no one to sue for your injuries. So, instead of keeping that system, we started using a Workers’ Compensation system that pays injured workers from the employer’s insurance for all work-related injuries regardless of who caused them. The trade-off, however, is that lawsuits against an employer are blocked entirely.
There are some narrow exceptions, such as when your employer does not carry the required insurance or when you are an independent contractor and are technically suing a client rather than an employer. However, most cases cannot be filed against your direct employer for an injury at work.
This also means that you are left with only the damages from your employer’s insurance. These cover around 2/3 of your lost wages and medical bills, but there are no additional damages for pain and suffering or any other consequences of the accident, such as a spouse’s loss of consortium, childcare expenses while you are in the hospital, and other costs. To get these, you would have to file a lawsuit – which is where third-party claims come in.
Suing Other Parties for Work Injuries in Philadelphia
While you might not be able to sue your boss or your employer for a work-related accident, there may be other parties responsible for the injury. Your Philadelphia personal injury lawyers can file a lawsuit against them instead, potentially opening access to all of the damages that your employer’s insurance would not cover.
In many work injury cases, the employer isn’t actually the one at fault anyway. If you were working on a roadside crew and a drunk driver ran through the barricades, it makes more sense to file your injury case against the negligent driver. Similarly, if you were hurt at work because your PPE failed, such as gloves or a facemask, that might not be the boss’ fault, but it is certainly the fault of the manufacturer that produced your defective PPE. When you sue a third party for your work-related accident, you might be suing the party that actually makes the most sense, where a claim against your employer just might not fit the situation.
When you sue a third party for your injuries, you also open up access to the rest of the damages that would be blocked in a claim with your employer’s insurance. This means you can get the other 1/3 of your lost wages, pain and suffering damages, and more. You may even be entitled to punitive damages, which would be mostly unavailable in Workers’ Compensation claims against your employer.
If you ultimately file both a Workers’ Compensation claim and a lawsuit against a third party, compensation can be a bit complicated.
Subrogation in Third-Party Work Injury Claims in Philadelphia
When you get money for an injury through insurance and then sue to get the rest of the damages paid, the insurance company that initially paid you might be able to file a “subrogation claim” against you. This would use the winnings in your lawsuit to pay them back for the money they already gave you for medical care and lost earnings.
With work injury cases, victims often file their Workers’ Compensation claims to get at least some of the money they need while a personal injury lawyer works on winning their third-party injury lawsuit. When you ultimately win that lawsuit, you get the rest of the money you need from the at-fault party, but you also get paid for what the Workers’ Compensation claim already paid you. The insurance carrier can, at that point, sue you to get back that part of your winnings so that you do not ultimately get paid double.
These claims are often quite confusing, given that you worked hard to get those damages from your lawsuit, and it doesn’t make sense that you would then lose them to the insurance company. Because of this, there may be cases with your employer’s insurance where you might want to forego a claim in the first place and focus your whole case on the third-party claim. We may also be able to work with the insurance carrier so that they join the suit and get paid directly by the at-fault party rather than putting you on the line to have the money clawed back from your wallet.
Knowing Which Claim to File
When you get hurt at work, you can rely on help from a lawyer to figure out how to proceed next. You should never assume that you are barred from a lawsuit in a work injury case just because your boss says so. There might be plenty of third parties liable for what happened to you, and your case against them is totally separate from any claims you might file with your employer’s insurance.
