Pain and suffering has never been part of workers’ comp, and that is the biggest pill that my clients swallow.
They get hurt, a guy that becomes a quadriplegic gets nothing for pain and suffering, unless we can find some other entity on the job site that potentially caused the injury, which is one of the things they don’t tell you about.
“Hey, you know the FedEx guy was delivering something and he left this big greasy contraption on the site that caused the injury.” Well, you’ve got a workers’ comp claim against your employer, but you have a personal injury claim, negligence claim against another entity. So, that’s the thing that they don’t want to tell you.
You need to kind of look under the hood and see what all the parts are to make sure the accident wasn’t someone else’s fault. And pain and suffering: I hurt, loss of enjoyment in life, I can’t do what I did before, has never been part of workers’ comp.
But the correct way to look at it is, is there a way to present that claim, because the people hurt badly.
And if they don’t have an opportunity to at least see if that’s out there, they’re probably leaving something on the table.