Here is a list of the common ways in which workers are injured on construction sites:

• Falls from heights
• Struck-by accidents
• Fires and explosions
• Truck or tractor trailer accidents
• Crane or hoist accidents
• Electrocution
• Forklift accidents
• Gas leaks
• Exposure to toxic chemicals
• Trench or excavation collapses
• Caught-in and caught-between accidents
• AScaffolding accidents
• Crane accidents

Our construction injury attorneys handle cases involving all type of injuries, from very serious or even fatal injuries, to relatively minor injuries. Many construction injury accidents result in so-called “soft tissue” injuries, such as sprained and strained necks, backs, shoulders and knees. We know these injuries are just as painful as a fracture and usually take a lot longer to recover from. We take the time to learn how these injuries affect our clients and then demand our clients be compensated fully and fairly for all they have gone through.

Most construction workers are covered by workers compensation insurance provided by their employers, which can cover medical bills and time lost from work. However, construction site injuries often lead to other harms and losses, such as the following, which are not covered by workers comp:

• Pain and suffering
• Physical disability
• Permanent scars
• Emotional distress
• Mental anguish
• Loss of enjoyment of life
• Loss of love and affection
• Embarrassment and humiliation
• Mental disability
• Current loss income
• Future lost income

If someone other than your employer or a co-worker caused your injury because of their carelessness or dangerous behavior, you have a legal right to be compensated by them for all your losses, even those that are not covered by workers compensation insurance. If you are an employee of a subcontractor, you may be able to recover from the general contractor if the general contractor did not maintain overall safety at the job site.

Our construction injury lawyers have handled cases involving construction injuries from Cape Cod to the Berkshires, and every place in between.

Being injured in a construction site accident is a frightening and confusing experience. Your body may be flooded with a surge of adrenaline during and immediately after a construction injury, which can make it difficult to fully understand what happened. You might make irrational decisions or statements that could affect your legal rights.

To prevent this, here are some things you should do if you are ever involved in a construction injury.

Assess your medical condition. If there is any question in your mind as to whether you should get medical attention, you probably should, so call 911 immediately. If you feel OK on the day of the accident, but worse the following day, seek medical attention then.

Carefully document relevant details. If you are able, take photographs of the location where you were injured, and whatever it was that caused the injury – heavy equipment, failure of a ladder or scaffolding, whatever it may be.

Report your injuries to your employer, and to the general contractor for the project where you fell. However, do not discuss the details of how or why you were injured.

Contact an experienced construction injury lawyer as soon as possible. Many locations where falls occur now have security cameras. If you contact a lawyer quickly, we can immediately write to the property owner to require them to save any security camera videos before the video gets lost or recorded over.

All lawsuits for injuries caused by construction site accidents must be filed in court within three years of the date of the incident. However, it is always best to get an experienced construction injury lawyer involved in your case as soon as possible after a construction injury. Important evidence can be lost if an investigation of the accident is delayed.

Sometimes people blame themselves for their construction site accident. These feelings are perfectly natural and understandable, but you can still recover from a careless or negligent person who also partially caused your injuries. An injured person may recover as long as he or she is not found to be more at fault than the other persons who caused the injury. In other words, if the injured person and another person are equally at fault, the injured person can still recover, but their recovery is reduced by their own percentage of fault. So, if a jury decides the injured person was 25% at fault, that person’s recovery is reduced by 25%. If the jury decides that the injured person was 51% or more at fault, he or she recovers nothing. For additional information on how courts compare the fault of persons involved in construction site injuries, see blog post on that topic here.

If you have been injured on a construction site, please contact our experienced personal injury attorney immediately at 508-543-3700.