Greenville Workers’ Comp Lawyers

Like other forms of insurance, workers’ comp coverage is often something we sign on for and forget about until we need it. But if you get injured under circumstances that are related to your job, you’ll be counting on that insurance to support your family.

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably suffered a workers’ comp injury. You’ve probably lost income while unable to work, and you may be in pain. You are probably financially stressed and wondering whom you can turn to for support to make sure your workers’ comp claim isn’t denied.

Our firm is here to help. We offer free legal consultations. Call our Greenville workers’ comp lawyers today.

If you’ve been injured at work, our team is here to help you navigate securing workers’ compensation. It can be difficult to succeed with a workers’ comp claim, and many people fall prey to the numerous pitfalls of what has become a broken system.

If you’ve been injured on the job, we can help you file necessary documentation and guide you with legal advice throughout the process. Our team in Greenville, South Carolina consists of lawyers who have put in over 100 years of combined work in this field. We’ve helped employees from businesses near Spartanburg, Greer, and the upstate file workers’ comp claims with great success.

Worker’s Comp Insurance in a Nutshell

Workers’ compensation, known as “workers’ comp” for short, is a state-mandated program established to support employees who have been injured or disabled at or in connection with their place of employ. Workers’ comp provides injured employees with modest payments to enable them to get medical treatment and assist them financially while they are unable to work.

In South Carolina, if an employee suffers an injury by an accident during their time on the job, that employee is entitled to recovering medical expenses and temporary compensation for lost time, as well as various disability benefits. Always read your employer’s handbook to know what you are eligible for.

Workers’ comp does not require your work-related injury to have occurred on your employer’s property. You may qualify after being hurt on a business trip, at a trade show, or while working on a location related to your job, such as at a client’s premises or while at a trip to one of the company’s manufacturers.

Under the workers’ comp program, some situations are covered, while others are not. It’s important to understand which list your circumstances fall within to know whether you will qualify for a claim.

What Workers’ Comp Covers

• Medical treatment for an illness or injury that is work-related
• Compensation for permanent injuries
• Income replacement while an employee is out of work because of a work-related injury
• Retraining expenses
• Rehabilitation expenses
• Survivor benefits for the family of a worker killed at or in an activity related to work

What Workers’ Comp Doesn’t Cover

• Injuries caused by an act of God
• Illnesses considered “ordinary disease of life”
• Injuries resulting from the use of illegal drugs or intoxication
• Injuries resulting from a worker who started a fight
• Pre-existing conditions
• A headache, flu, or other illnesses considered one-time or of individual occurrence
• Injures caused by an employee engaged in “horseplay”
• Heart attack
• Injuries suffered during the commission of a crime
• Injuries sustained during a willful attempt to hurt oneself or another person
• Injuries that can be treated with basic first aid
• Injuries sustained during conduct that is in violation of company policy
• Injuries suffered while not at work and not on the job in some way
• Injuries during recreational off-duty activities

In comparing these two lists, it’s easy to see that making a successful workers’ comp claim can be difficult. There are many more disqualifying types of situations than those that qualify. In addition, every state has its own set of laws regulating the limitations of workers’ comp. The additional reality that filing a straight workers’ comp claim usually disqualifies you from pursuing a lawsuit against your employer makes it even more important to consider enlisting the guidance of our knowledgeable Greenville workers’ comp lawyers before moving forward.

Christian & Christian Law assist people with personal injury matters in the following locations: Anderson, Clemson, Easley, Fountain Inn, Greenville County, Greer, Mauldin, Simpsonville, Spartanburg, and Travelers Rest.

Hiring Our Greenville Workers’ Comp Lawyers Will Help You Avoid Common Mistakes

There are many pitfalls to watch out for when navigating workers’ comp claims. Read on to learn about some of them and how having the right attorney will help you get the most from your claim. Much of it comes down to knowing your rights. The very best way to ensure that your rights are protected is by reaching out to our Greenville workers’ comp lawyers for a free legal consultation.

Don’t Use Your Personal Health Insurance

Not only will using your personal health insurance on a workers’ comp injury confuse your claim’s validity, but it can interfere with you going about the correct way to notify your employer of your injury. This notification step is required to qualify you for your workers’ comp benefits. In addition, the fine print in your private health insurance is also likely to have a section that prevents you from being able to use your private insurance to cover work-related injuries.

All of this means that if you use the wrong insurance for something work-related, you may end up receiving a request to pay the insurance company back for something they believe was covered that should not have been. Given the cost of medical care, this can turn out to be an alarming amount.

Don’t put yourself at financial risk. Assume the insurance company will eventually catch any charges billed to them that they can somehow get out of. Remember, insurance companies are huge machines with intricate billing codes designed specifically for being able to parse out the details of claims to the finest degree. These companies have millions of dollars, or more, and their biggest concern is keeping as much of it as possible. Follow your company’s protocol and make sure you route treatment for your injuries through the correct workers’ comp channels.

Don’t Place Your Trust in the Workers’ Comp Representative

When you’ve been injured, you’re likely to feel vulnerable. Depending on the severity of your injury, you may also be worried and anxious about getting treatment. These situations can understandably cause you to place your trust in the professionals around you and be grateful to them for their help. Even so, it’s important to remain aware that the insurance adjuster who is involved in your claim is working on the side of the insurance company, not you.

This may seem cynical, but it does mean that their job involves making sure the company doesn’t end up paying you any more than they must for the treatment of your injuries. In the worst case, this may translate to them finding a way to disqualify your injury from workers’ comp coverage entirely.

Assume anything you say can and will be used against the value of your claim if the adjuster can find a way to do so. The easiest way to protect yourself from placing too much trust in your company’s workers’ comp adjuster is to retain a lawyer to handle all communications on your behalf.

Don’t Allow Your Employer to Bully You into Returning to Work Early

One of the reasons people succumb to pressure to return to work earlier than they should is their fear that they’ll be fired for using workers’ comp.

Your employer cannot fire you for filing workers’ compensation. We recommend you come to an agreement on a return to work date and be in touch with your employer regarding any medical engagements or accommodations you may have or need before returning to work.

That said, your employer has good reason to try to avoid allowing you to be completely taken off the work roster by the workers’ comp authorized physician. The more employees who participate in lost time claims — meaning out of work completely and paid a partial salary while on temporary total disability, the higher the employer’s insurance premiums. As a result, your employer is likely to seek a way to keep you on the roster as soon as possible, with duties that are adjusted to accommodate your condition.

This can get dicey, as it may simply be unfair to you to return you to work before you’ve had adequate time to recover. In addition, you’ve got to be very careful that the assigned alternate activity does in fact protect your injury from being aggravated.

Reassigning employees like this only benefits the employer and is something our Greenville workers’ comp lawyers will watch out for to ensure your rights are protected.

Don’t Underestimate the Importance of Hiring an Experienced Workers’ Comp Lawyer

Not all attorneys will bring you the same results in your workers’ comp claim. As you can tell from the information on this page, workers’ comp is a complicated area of the law. This is not an arena to step into alone, where big insurance money and big corporation money work together to the disadvantage of the employee. Get the help and guidance of someone experienced in protecting the rights of injured South Carolina workers. Don’t just call any attorney. They may be excellent in another area of the law but entirely inexperienced with the nuances of the workers’ comp system. You have too much at stake to walk into a workers’ comp claim without a guide. Call us and find out how we can help you recover the compensation you need to protect your rights and take care of your family.

South Carolina Workers’ Comp Client Story

We are sharing the story of a client below to help illustrate the elements of a workers’ comp claim. Though we’ve changed names and specifics to protect the privacy of our clients, the value of the content remains. Please read it through, and then give us a call to learn how we can help with your claim.

Darlene Rodgers endured another sleepless night. It started, as it often did these days, with a dream in which nagging shoulder pain would intrude until she was on her knees clutching her injured shoulder as tears streamed down her face as she told the concerned people around her in her dream, I don’t know what’s wrong. It just started hurting really badly.

Then she’d abruptly wake up, her very real shoulder pain having snapped her back to consciousness. It happened nightly now. She never knew how much rest she was going to get before waking, only that once she woke, her sleep was finished until she needed to be up for work. Melatonin didn’t help, Tylenol PM didn’t help. She wasn’t willing to try the hard-core pain killers as they were too risky. In any event, she was also sure her insurance wouldn’t cover it. She was stuck in pain and exhausted.

It had been over a year since she’d torn her rotator cuff unloading a shipment at her job in Greenville, South Carolina. She’d followed all the rules and gone through workers’ comp. They did the first surgery eight months ago, but then the pain had returned. She’d encountered problems with getting additional physical therapy and pain management approved. When she requested a second opinion through the workers’ comp panel system, she was told she may need a second surgery, but had been unable to get it approved. Instead of allowing her to move forward, her employer’s insurance adjuster had ordered an independent medical examination, and the delays continued.

In the meantime, she was unable to return to full capacity at work. She’d eventually been pressured back to working part time, without any help for the gap in her income, while the pain persisted, wearing her down by day and destroying her sleep. Darlene became more and more desperate, feeling caught in a downward spiral of pain, exhaustion, and financial decay while waiting for workers’ comp to approve a second operation.

Worried for her physical, mental, and emotional health, Darlene’s boyfriend Steve talked her into speaking with workers’ comp lawyer Harold Christian of Christian & Christian Attorneys at Law.

How much does it cost to hire a lawyer?

Darlene’s first question was about the cost of hiring the firm. “As you can guess, money has been sorely lacking for more than a year now. I’m looking at the possibility of bankruptcy,” she said, despondently. “How much would it cost to hire your firm for a workers’ comp claim?”

“There is no up-front cost to hiring the firm,” said Attorney Christian. “Our contingency-fee model fronts all expenses for your case from start to finish. This allows us to get you started with your claim right away without the stress of worrying about cash up-front. In the end, you only pay us if we successfully resolve your claim.”

“Wow,” said Darlene. “You must be pretty good if you can work like that.”

“It does work for us, as well as our clients. The beauty of this truly free consultation is that we’re here to answer your claim questions and make sure we can help you before we take on your claim. It works well all the way around, so please ask away,” smiled Attorney Christian.

How can an attorney help me with my denied workers’ comp claim?

“I want to make sure hiring a lawyer is the next right step. I followed the rules, and I trusted the system. It took a while to get approval for surgery, but then when I finally got it, I thought, ‘Okay, now it will get resolved and I can get back to work.’

“They did the first surgery, but it didn’t fix the injury. The pain returned, and I was unable to regain my strength. Everything fell apart after that, it seems, including getting coverage for pain management and additional therapies.

“On top of it all, the insurance adjuster apparently told my doctor it was time for me to get back to work. How can they do that? The adjuster is not a doctor. I went back part time, but I’m not supposed to use my injured shoulder, and it’s not always that cut-and-dried. My shoulder still hurts, so anything they ask of me that involves lifting and unloading shipments aggravates it.

“What I want is to move forward in confirming there is a problem, and then gaining approval to get it fixed. But at this point, I don’t want to make any moves that will disqualify my claim. I feel as though I’m at an impasse because I don’t want to make any mistakes, but I clearly need guidance and support. And I’m frankly not making enough income to survive financially. Something’s got to give,” said Darlene. “Can hiring an attorney help me with all of this?”

“The short answer is yes,” said Attorney Christian. “Unfortunately, your story is not unique. All too often, we see employees wrongfully denied their benefits in a broken system. The delays you mention are common and can cause conditions to go untreated too long, sometimes causing permanent injury in what should have been a treatable condition.

“A common insurance company tactic is to request a second opinion from what is called an “independent medical examiner, or IME,” said Christian. “This is supposed to be a way to resolve a dispute about your treatment. The problem is it’s anything but independent. The doctor doing the review is chosen and paid for by the insurance company.

“The IME gives their opinion to the insurance company regarding your injury, disability level, ability to return to work, and any future treatment you may need for your condition.

“The fact that the insurance company contracts with these IMEs is really a conflict of interest, because many of these doctors are semi-retired and making good money telling the insurance companies what they want to hear.

“What the insurance companies want to hear is information that supports limiting employee benefits and denying claims. This saves them money. When IMEs rule in favor of the insurance companies like this, they continue to receive paid contract assignments. It’s a rigged system.

“In addition, sometimes a claim is approved, but the insurance company saddles the worker with up to 49% of their medical expenses. One of their best tricks adjusters use to achieve this is finding a way to frame an injury as a pre-existing condition to lower the amount they must pay out.

“I know all of this must sound dire, but it’s the reason you’re right to seek help from a workers’ comp lawyer as you move forward. We would begin with contacting your employer and the insurer and make them provide the reason for the delays and denials of your treatment. We’ll arrange for an administrative hearing and review your denial.

“Our firm will then investigate your claim and do a deep dive into your workers’ comp policy to prevent them from slipping out of benefits they are required to provide.

“We will then resubmit all necessary paperwork on your behalf, including insurance forms and medical records. We’ll then make your case to a judge,” said Christian.

“At this point, I think you’ve got a claim to pursue, Ms. Rodgers, and I agree it’s time for back-up from a workers’ comp trial attorney who can navigate the maze your claim has fallen into and fight for your right to compensation.

“Workers’ comp claims are, as you by now can tell, complex,” said Christian. “And most often are heavily slanted in favor of big business and big insurance. No matter whom you move forward with, it’s time you enlist help from an experienced workers’ comp lawyer. Our firm has the experience and tenacity to navigate your claim forward.”

Darlene was satisfied with what she learned in her free legal consultation. She retained Christian & Christian, and Attorney Harold Christian won her claim. She was granted the corrective care she needed for her shoulder and was compensated for her medical expenses and back pay going back to the initial injury. She also received maximum compensation for the delay of her rightful benefits in the form of a penalty payment.

Call Our Greenville Workers’ Comp Lawyers Today

We hope the information above has helped you gain insight into what to expect in a workers’ comp claim. Don’t struggle alone against big insurance and the workers’ comp system. Call our Greenville workers’ comp lawyers and learn how we can protect your right to financial compensation after a workplace injury.