Workers who are injured on the job in Arizona are entitled to statutory benefits (medical expenses, temporary disability benefits, etc ) under the Arizona Worker’s Compensation laws. Because of workers comp, injured workers do not have the right to make negligence claims against their employers for the full extent of their damages — such things as pain and suffering, disfigurement or emotional upset.

Our firm does not handle worker’s compensation claims against an injured worker’s employer; if you have such a claim, we will help direct you to a lawyer who handles such claims. Instead, our efforts are directed to those claims where the accident was caused in whole on in part by the fault by someone other than the injured worker and his or her employer.

There are many federal and state safety regulations (such as OSHA) that apply to jobsites. When an accident has been caused by the negligence of a general contractor for having an unsafe worksite, or a subcontractor who is not the employer of the injured person, claims can be made for the full value of an injured worker’s claim.

We have found through years of representing such injured workers that jobsite safety is often sacrificed in an effort to get projects done quickly and maximize profits. Working with safety experts, we often find that regulations have been ignored or violated. Violations of this nature can form a solid basis for making claims for the injury or death of a worker.

In our representation of injured workers, we have also often found that some employers have taken advantage of cheap and unskilled labor in Arizona and have put such workers on a jobsite without proper safety training or equipment. On crowded jobsites, this makes for a dangerous condition, with the potential for serious injury and death.

In one such case, a large contractor had recruited a workforce of over 250 employees, 90% of whom were undocumented, and had little training and no safety equipment. Employees were solicited to come from Mexico because the employer knew that undocumented workers were less likely to complain of conditions. On the first day of his new job, a young worker was put atop a tall housing complex to lay sheets of plywood. With no safety equipment, he fell three stories, rendering him a quadriplegic. The contractor took the position that the man must have been a trespasser! Our investigation turned up the truth, and the contractor was responsible for the injuries.