Legal Question in Personal Injury in Arizona
Back Injury at work.
A few days ago I injured my back at work. I had been down this road before and have taken the precautions nessecary to preven more injury. Workmans comp is taking care of the issue for now.
In this case I was opening the hood on my Semi for the pre trip inspection. I felt the snap in my back and now my foot is numb. The problem I see here is that this was a preventable injury. I have wrote up the hood several times in the last year and the driver assigned to the truck before me wrote it up also. You really need to people to open the hood on this vehicle because it is so tweaked that it takes an estimate 200 lbs to open it. With this said is it possible to go back and file a lawsuit against the company for refusing to fix a safety issue such as this?
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: Back Injury at work.
Normally, under Arizona law, any claim against an employer is usually barred, unless the employee opted out of workers compensation, which in this case it does not sound like you have. To opt out, you would have had to submit a notice in writing to the employer indicating that you did not want workers compensation coverage, and instead retained your right to sue your employer for personal injuries. That is extremely rare. Additionally, since it sounds like you already have an active workers compensation claim going, that you must not have opted out.
If some third party, such as a repair facility was negligent, the analysis may be different and there may be a claim.
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