An injured worker with a big back injury came to me for advice recently. He got hurt on the job and needs surgery. The catch is that he owns the company and didn’t know if he could do anything about it because in his mind, he would be suing himself.

First point is that an Illinois workers’ compensation claim is not a lawsuit, but instead a claim for benefits. That is an important difference. If you are driving your own car and crash, you can not sue yourself for negligence. But if it is a job injury, since it is not a lawsuit, you do not have to prove negligence. You are claiming benefits just like if you pursued treatment under the company health insurance policy.

Now that that is out of the way, there is one key question any time an owner of a company is hurt on the job in Illinois. And that question is, do you carry work comp insurance on yourself?

Every employee in Illinois is covered by work comp, with one big exception. An owner (meaning someone who owns at least 5% of a company) can exclude themselves from work comp claims. That often happens because an owner is likely to be a higher wage earner. So excluding themselves lowers their insurance premiums and since they are the owner they can likely pay themselves for any time off work unless them being out of work kills the company.

So if you are an owner and get hurt on the job AND have not excluded yourself from work comp coverage, you are supposed to be treated like any other employee. That said, these cases are not always straight forward. That is because:

  1. Typically an insurance company is dealing with claims about employees, not the owner.
  2. As a result, investigating a case is harder because there is often nobody independent to talk to about what happened when you got hurt.
  3. So at times the insurance companies will take longer than they should to approve and process a claim. Basically they will often assume you are lying even without any evidence that shows that.

The reality is that Illinois law does not allow an insurance company to delay paying lost time benefits or approving medical bills just because they are “investigating.” They have to have a reasonable excuse for any delays. Being suspicious just because it is the owner who made the claim is not reasonable.

So often an injured owner has to act faster and more aggressively or they risk getting screwed over. That means hiring an attorney to immediately file the case and file the right trial motions to put pressure on the insurance company.

The key point is that you have the same rights and benefits as any other injured worker. They can not deny or delay just because it is your company.

Bottom line is that if you own the company and work a heavy duty job or if you getting hurt and being unable to work would cause you big financial harm, you should not exclude yourself from insurance.

And if you have any questions or want a free case review, please call us any time at 312-346-5578.