A Closer Look at Workplace Injury With Keith Shindler

Welcome to another edition of Claim Your Justice Injury Law on Facebook Live. The purpose of these Facebook Live sessions is to provide our Facebook community, our Chicagoland community, and the greater Facebook community with useful information on how to protect your rights when injured in an accident.

I want to teach you How to Claim Your Justice when a loved one, a friend, or anyone else you know, is injured in any type of accident, that’s the result of someone else’s responsibility or fault. You can reach us very easily on the web at claimyourjustice.com. You can certainly call us anytime at 847-434-3555. You could also email us a question we’ll try and answer you quickly.

 

 

We pride ourselves on being accurate and protecting the rights of our clients and of course, I can not overstate it, helping our clients Claim Your Justice. A few weeks ago, we talked about worker’s compensation cases. Today we’re going to discuss one finer point of worker’s compensation cases. I’m lucky enough again to be assisted by Jessica Wong Barrera .

I found this to be a useful method for back-and-forth conversation which helps the message come out a little bit cleaner. Again, the goal is to help our Facebook community know what their rights are, how to protect their rights, and how to maximize their monetary recovery, how to get the most money when they’re injured.

Q: Several months ago, as you said, you discussed some of the basics of worker’s compensation cases, what are those basics?

A: The basics are, if a person is an employee, not an independent contractor, and there are some exceptions, but if the person is an employee, and they’re injured while performing their job duties. That is the basic vanilla worker’s compensation case.

Q: What is scope of employment?

That is one of the legalese types of words. So, I said in answering the first question that they’re injured while doing their jobs. The legal term is more along the lines of “was the employee injured during the ‘scope of employment while they were doing their job duties.

For the legal use of the scope of employment, it is where was the employee was doing their job, whether they’re working as a laborer, taking pieces of equipment off a conveyor belt, or working in a bakery, putting ingredients into a mixer, or working as a delivery truck driver. If they are doing what they are supposed to be doing to perform their job, then they’re working within the scope of their employment.

Q: What is one exception you have seen when an injury would not have been covered by worker’s compensation?

A: Great question, almost like a law school question, but it is a very real-life question also. If someone is deviating from their job duties, an example that all of us could imagine happening is you have a delivery driver, they’re out on the road for 10+ hours, making deliveries, and they stop at their boyfriend or girlfriend’s house for lunch, or a quickie or something like that.

They’re injured while making that stop at their boyfriend or girlfriend’s house. The employer is going to say, very sorry that you’re injured, we don’t have a problem that you take time off of work for your injury, but we are not going to pay for your time off, and we are not going to pay for your injury.

The delivery truck driver says hey, I was punched in, I was making my deliveries, and I was injured. The fact is the person deviated from their job duties. That’s one exception where the injury would not be considered to have happened during the scope of employment.

Q: What is the personal comfort doctrine?

A: This is a finer detail of workers comp cases, and when you hire Claim Your Justice for a work-related injury, we’ll handle all of this. That being said, the personal comfort doctrine is where let’s say you have an employee that is working in a meat packing facility, or a fish packing facility for a better example.

That employee has worked a long shift and now they want to clean up after work. They want to take a shower at the shower facilities provided by their employer. So they’re at the plant, they finish their job, they go to take a shower, and they’re injured while taking the shower, they slip and fall and break their leg. Well, the employer might try to say, hey, you weren’t doing your job duties, just like we explained previously. You’re deviating from your job duties, no case.

Well, the personal comfort doctrine was developed to say, that’s not fair to the employee who’s injured and for the employer to get away with that. If you’re engaged in an activity for your comfort, that has some connection to the job you’re doing, then it would fall under the personal comfort doctrine for coverage.

What’s another example? Let’s say you have a construction worker out on the job, and it’s in the middle of summer, it’s 90 degrees, and they want to go into a shaded area and relieve themselves from some of the heat, that may be deemed a personal comfort that they’re using.

Another personal comfort doctrine case is if you have someone hurt in the bathroom. Weird example, you’re at an office, a plant, or a factory, and you go to the bathroom. While you’re in the bathroom you slip and fall. There was a  case where someone was flushing the toilet and hurt their rotator cuff.

How could you possibly hurt your rotator cuff by flushing the toilet and expect to have a worker’s compensation case? Well, if the toilet in the personal comfort facilities that are provided is defective, then you’re going to be able to claim worker’s compensation.

I’m trying to avoid all the legal technicalities, but what would happen is in that case, because it’s not within the scope of employment the law provides three levels of risk analysis to review. I’ll make that review of the risk analysis, make the argument and explain to the employer why this particular case should be covered.

Contact Our Illinois Workplace Injury Attorney

Jessica, thank you for your help here today. Everyone out there remember, if you, a loved one, a family member, or co-worker, were injured in any type of accident, reach out to Claim Your Justice. We’re here to help you, we have been doing this for more than 30 years.

We’re here to protect our client’s rights and maximize the recovery that the client makes. You can contact us at 847-434-3555. Remember, there is no fee for our services until we make a successful recovery. Call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Reach out to us on the internet. Thank you for taking the time to listen to Claim Your Justice Facebook Live.

Disclaimer

This information is not intended to be legal advice. You should consult an attorney for advice regarding your individual situation. We invite you to contact us and welcome your calls, letters, and electronic mail. Contacting us does not create an Attorney-Client relationship. An Attorney-Client relationship is created when you sign a written agreement with our law firm. Please do not send any confidential information to us until such time as an Attorney-Client relationship has been established.