Workplace Accident Injury Claim vs. Workers’ Compensation

Transcript

Here in Georgia, if you are injured on the workplace, then you have one year to file what’s called a workers’ compensation claim. However, if we’re talking about filing a case down at the courthouse where you’re looking at a third party that may also be responsible for your injury, not your employer. You have two years to file that case. The worker’s compensation claim is just against the employer. If you’re hurt on the job, the law says that your exclusive remedy for any wrong that may have taken place there with the employer is going to be your workers’ compensation claim as to any injury that you’ve suffered that’s not the result of any action or omission by the employer. So if it’s a third party, if someone else was on that job site and they were responsible for inspecting and making sure the equipment was okay and they didn’t do that and you get injured, that’s a third party. If there’s a piece of equipment, that you’re using on that job site, and it was manufactured in a defective way and it causes you an injury, that’s a third party claim. So there are these other these other claims against what we call third parties, people who are not your employer. You can file those cases over in front of what you see on television. You see the judge, the jury. It’s a civil case. So that case has a different time period to file than your workers’ compensation claim.