Since people know that I’m a lawyer who’ll talk to anyone about anything for free, I often get calls from people who have situations other than Illinois workers’ compensation.
It amazes me how often someone will start to tell me about a case they want to pursue, but have no idea that they might have a work comp case too.
Most recently I was called by a mechanic who had a back surgery that went poorly as it appears the screw from his fusion was pressing on a nerve. Someone told him that I know the top medical malpractice lawyers in Chicago and that’s true.
While we were talking about his case, I learned that he was a mechanic and had no idea how he hurt his back in the first place. We went on to discuss his job duties and as you can imagine, back when he was working he did a lot of heavy lifting. In fact at the end of the day his back would be sore. He’d feel better after he had his two days off, but when he started back at work it would become worse every day.
He never pursued workers’ compensation because he never had an accident. To me though it’s clear that his job activities played a role in him developing such a bad injury. He’s been forced to sell his home and crowd fund for help with his medical bills because he’s been without an income for two years. But with workers’ compensation benefits, 100% of his medical bills will be paid and he’d get compensated for his time off work.
The good news is that all of this can happen retro-actively if we can get a doctor to agree that his job activities played a role in his injury. We can’t get his house back, but hopefully we can get his life back on track.
For you, remember that you aren’t expected to be a doctor, lawyer or Judge. If you know how you hurt yourself that is great, but if you don’t that doesn’t mean you can never bring a case. There are time limits of course, but if we can show that your job played a role in you developing your condition then you can get benefits.
The key point is that the job has to just play a role. It doesn’t have to be the only reason you got hurt or even the major reason. Illinois law allows for benefits if your job caused, aggravated or accelerated your injury. We can help you figure out if that’s possible as well as tell you what to ask your doctor in order to get their opinion as to what impact your job had.
This can be confusing. If you’d like to work with an attorney in our state wide network or just have questions, call us in confidence at (312) 346-5578 or fill out our contact form to the right.
