Most hurt construction workers in Los Angeles file for workers’ compensation and stop there. That is often a costly mistake. Workers’ comp pays your medical bills and part of your lost wages. It pays nothing for your pain. And it puts a hard cap on what you can collect. If someone other than your boss caused your Los Angeles construction accident, California law lets you file a second claim. That claim can be worth many times the first.
Lawyers call it a third-party claim. Few hurt workers ever hear about it. By the time they do, the deadline to build one has often passed.
Two claims, and a huge gap between them
Workers’ comp is a trade. You get paid without proving anyone was at fault. In return, you give up the right to sue your own employer. The checks are small. In California, temporary disability pays two-thirds of your average weekly wage, up to a state cap. It pays nothing for the six months you spent unable to pick up your own kid.
A third-party claim runs on different rules. Say a general contractor or an equipment maker did something careless, and you got hurt because of it. Now you can go after that party head-on. There is no cap on pain and suffering. You can recover your full lost pay, not two-thirds of it. And here is the part that matters most: you can run both claims at once, which is exactly what most people fail to do.
Your employer’s insurer will not point this out. They push you toward workers’ comp and stay quiet about the third party. Why would they help? That money does not come out of their pocket. So the door stays shut until you or your lawyer open it.
Whose mistake put you in the hospital
On a busy LA job site, a dozen companies can work the same building on the same day. When you get hurt, the next question is who caused it. On a shared site, there is often more than one answer. Any one of those parties can owe you money.
Several parties often share the blame in a construction case:
- A subcontractor whose crew left a floor opening with no cover
- The general contractor in charge of safety who knew about a hazard and left it
- A scaffolding company that built a platform wrong
- A property owner who knew the site was dangerous and said nothing
- A maker whose nail gun or lift was defective
You do not need to name the right one on day one. That is what an investigation is for. But time works against you, and it works fast. Scaffolds come down. The crew that saw it moves to the next site. Photos get wiped off phones. With each day that passes, a piece of your case walks out the gate.
What the safety numbers really say
The federal safety agency, OSHA, tracks how construction workers die on the job. Four causes drive most of it. OSHA calls them the Fatal Four: falls, struck-by objects, caught-in machines, and electrocution. Falls alone cause close to one in three construction deaths.
A death rate might seem far from your own injury claim, but it is not. Each of those causes points straight at a safety rule that someone broke. A fall from height means a missing guardrail, or a harness with nowhere to clip in. A struck-by injury means a load left loose, or a work zone with no barrier. When a rule was broken, you have the start of a real case against whoever was supposed to enforce it. That link between the broken rule and the careless party is the heart of every strong construction claim.
The first 72 hours decide a lot
The strength of your case is often set in the first three days, before you have hired anyone. A few simple moves protect it, and most hurt workers skip them because no one told them to.
Report the injury to your employer in writing right away. California gives you 30 days, but do it the same day, because a late report is the first thing an insurer uses to doubt you. Then get medical care, and describe exactly how it happened. “I fell” is not enough. “The guardrail on the third floor was missing and I fell about twelve feet onto rebar” tells the doctor, and later a jury, what they need to hear.
Photograph the open scaffold and the wet floor with no warning sign, or ask a coworker to do it if you cannot. A photo taken that same afternoon beats any statement written three weeks later. One more thing, and it is the one people get wrong most: say nothing to an insurance company on a recorded line before you talk to a lawyer. Their adjusters do this for a living. You are hurt and stressed, and they are trained to nudge you into saying it was your own fault.
The deadline nobody warns you about
California gives you two years from the date of injury to sue a third party. That sounds like plenty of time. It is not. A construction case can take many months to build. And if the property owner turns out to be a public agency, like a city or a school district, you may have as little as six months to file a formal claim. Miss that shorter window and your right to sue is gone for good. It will not matter how badly you were hurt or how clear the fault was. So get your case looked at early, while the scaffold still stands and the witnesses still remember your name.
Were you hurt on a construction site in Los Angeles or nearby? Find out whether a third-party claim exists before the evidence disappears. The review is free, and it costs you nothing to learn where you stand. The Law Offices of Howard Kornberg has handled serious injury cases across LA for decades, and in one call we can tell you whether your case is workers’ comp only or something far larger. Call 310-474-5588 to talk it through today.
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