You recently suffered an injury in an auto accident in Northern California, and you want to know whether you might be able to file a workers’ compensation claim to collect benefits to remunerate you for your hospital bills, lost work time and productivity, rehab and therapy bills, and so forth. The answer depends on the nature of the accident and the business (or lack thereof) that you were doing.
Here are three examples of situations in which you might qualify for California workers’ comp:
Personal Injury Or Workers Compensation? Or both?
1. You’re a pizza delivery driver, and some careless San Jose executive in an SUV blew through a stop sign and T-boned your car.
Since you were engaged in an act of work – you were delivering a pizza to a customer – you could likely build a case that you deserve workers’ comp. Depending on the nature of the injuries and the other driver’s negligence/carelessness, you may also be able to sue that person and/or that person’s insurance company.
2. Your business rental car crashes en route from your drive to your hotel.
For instance, say you had been attending a conference in San Jose, and you crashed your car on the 880 freeway due to some freak brake malfunction with the rental car. Since you were attending a work event – a weekend seminar, for instance – you might be entitled to workers’ comp.
3. You were chatting with a colleague/client in the passenger seat, when an out-of-control truck sideswiped you and forced you to bail out on the side of the road.
Again, since you were engaged with a work colleague, depending on what you were doing and where you were headed, you might be able to make a workers’ comp claim.
The nuances and exceptions to California workers’ compensation rules are astonishingly complicated. Rather than try to “figure out everything” on your own, get in touch with the experienced San Francisco lawyers at the Law Offices of Daniel Vega for a free, complete, and no-nonsense consultation about what you might be able to do, legally speaking, to get compensation.
Bay Area Accident Attorney | Bay Area Personal Injury Lawyer | Bay Area Employment Attorney