It is hard enough to be out of work with an injury, but if you got hurt at work and feel that you are not getting the treatment you should or, worse, are being pushed to sign away your rights after the injury, hiring a workers' compensation attorney is probably the best thing you can do. Protecting yourself after a work-related injury should never be required, but if you are getting the runaround from your employer, it may be the only option you have.

Talking to a Lawyer

Before you decide the best path to take, it is a good idea to sit down with a workers' compensation attorney and talk to them about your case. Explain the injury and how it happened. They need to know what you were doing at the time to determine if you are even slightly at fault in the accident. The lawyer will also need to look at the process and how you got hurt to determine if there is something your employer should have done differently to protect you.

In many cases, assigning blame to the incident is not about winning large sums of money as much as it is about showing that the employer needs to take care of medical expenses and therapies for the injured employee. If you are trying to get better and get back to work, you may want your employer to support that because you got hurt while working for them. 

Injuries and Negligence

If, during the investigation, your workers' compensation attorney finds that there was some negligence on the part of the company that caused or contributed to the accident or injury, you may want to seek damages from the company. The attorney can file a lawsuit against the company and ask for your employer to pay for the injuries and medical care. They can also ask for a settlement for the time out of work, the pain you are in, and potentially for your inability to go back to work.

The settlement may require you to leave your job. Still, if the doctors feel you will no longer be able to work as a result of the injury you sustained, a workers' compensation attorney will use that information to try and get you a settlement that will allow you to live comfortably and pay for any medical bills that come up as a result of the injury. Talk with the lawyer about the situation and make sure that all the details are on the table so that your attorney has a clear picture of the incident and what they can do to help you.