As a worker at a construction site, you should know what to do if you get injured at work. Now, before you do anything else – the most important thing to do right after you get hurt is to seek medical attention. This is undeniably the most important thing that you need to do.
If you cannot get to the hospital yourself, ask a colleague to make the call so you can get into an ambulance as soon as possible. This should be your first step before doing anything else.
Why Should You See A Doctor First?
Even if you feel the injuries are slight and you are okay – don’t make the mistake of brushing things off and telling yourself that you are okay. You must seek medical attention right away. Tell your doctors everything so that they can figure out your medical problems and maintain a record that your attorney can use in court to get you the compensation that you are entitled to.
Naturally, your next step will be to call an attorney, not just any attorney, but one who has experience in this particular area. We cannot stress enough the importance of hiring an attorney with experience in this field. Your attorney will be on your side throughout the entire process and also help you with potential problems that you have with your employer because those problems will arise after your accident at the construction site.
The lawyer will also help with potential problems linked with identifying who the responsible party is in your case and whatever event led to you getting injured.
How Will You Prove Liability with the Help Of Your Lawyer?
If you have been in an accident while working at a construction site and sustained injury, you have to work closely with a lawyer to prove liability. Now, the question is, how do you exactly go about establishing liability for your general contractor or the sub-contractor?
Your Lawyer Can Access the Accident Report
The injuries can be severe in construction accident cases. Certainly, construction companies know that in the case of an accident – no matter how serious – they need to complete an accident report. These reports aren’t short statements but detailed descriptions of how the accident happened, who got injured, and who saw the accident happening.
Now, this accident report is not crafted in anticipation of litigation – but it is done in compliance with the normal course of the construction company’s terms of business. So, the accident report is discoverable, which means that whatever was filled out in the report about the accident – can be and should be made accessible to your lawyer.
Your Lawyer Can Access Conversations That Happened Right After the Accident
Apart from the accident report, your lawyer has the right to access emails or any conversations that were held within a short time frame after the accident happened. If you look at this, you will understand that all these aspects go a long way in letting your lawyer know about the true state of mind and true feelings on the part of the construction company or the contractor that is being sued.
All of this will eventually prove fruitful in proving liability, which is absolutely mandatory, especially when you have sustained a serious injury due to the accident.
What Goes into Dealing A Construction Site Accident
If you are a construction worker, you should know what your lawyer will do in case you get injured at a construction site. The thing is that getting injured at a construction site is challenging in itself, and dealing with a construction site accident correctly is not easy either.
There is a lot of work that goes into managing a construction site accident effectively.
Hiring A Knowledgeable Attorney
Your attorney will need to have the much-needed knowledge of the substantive area of law. So, if you work at a construction site that is in Hillsboro and you have sustained an injury while on the site, you might want to get in touch with the lawyers in that area, such as the Hillsboro Construction Accident Lawyers, who are in an ideal position to handle your case.
Handling a construction site accident case involves your lawyers working with experts who can tell you what is expected and what is good practice on the part of the general contractor, who typically is the entity that gets sued by you.
Understanding the Contracts
It also involves a knowledge of the contracts that you signed at the time of joining the job. Usually, according to the American Institute of Architects, it is imposed on the general contractor or someone else – the duty of safety.
Handling a construction site accident case effectively also involves understanding corporations because entities that buy and renovate buildings may want the protection of the corporation from it. So, it involves the understanding of how to depose a corporation. It also involves understanding the OSHA codes and how to use them in terms of evidence.
Assessing OSHA Codes
When it comes to evidence, handling a construction site accident case also involves knowing if any of the entities have been cited by OSHA before. This aspect will involve using that fat – not to prove that they violated something in his instance – although you want that – but to prove that the defendant had noticed and could have gotten their act together.
They could have been alert to the fact that they had violated this sort of thing before; you, the client, were injured.
Establishing Evidence
Handling a construction site accident case also includes understanding what constitutes an admission and what constitutes evidence of negligence, such as a violation of a company’s safety manual. Once your lawyer starts listing all of these aspects linked with the construction site accident, there is depth to each of these aspects.
So, if you have been injured at a construction site, you must hire a construction site accident lawyer who is willing to take on the pressure that goes into handling a case like yours and who is willing to work on your behalf from the very start to the end.