3. What is a Third-Party Lawsuit? (Can You Bring a 3rd Party Case?)
Deezer In this episode Jonathan Rosenfeld chats with Gerald Bekkerman an Attorney at Taxman, Pollock, Murray, & Bekkerman, LLC.
Here, they discuss 'What is a Third-Party Claim?" and the nexus between work compensation coverage and civil law and dive into what benefits are and are not offered.
They also answer 3 key questions:
1) What is a 3rd party claim? What are some examples of 3rd party claim cases? 2) So as a person injured on the job, can you have both workers comp and 3rd party 3) There are some situations where the responsible parties are apparent. How can you tell if you have a case or not?
Read the Transcript
Jonathan Rosenfeld:
Hello. I am Jonathan Rosenfeld. And thank you for joining me today with the Personal Injury podcast. and I am joined today by Gerald Bekkerman, a partner at Taxman, Pollock, Murray & Bekkerman in Chicago, and Jerry's got a laundry list of accomplishments in the legal world. But I think one of the things that stands out most is really his track record of success. Jerry and his law firm have recovered over $400 million for people who have suffered injuries, and Jerry is really seasoned in what we're going to talk about today, which is third-party liability in work-related cases. And to give you an idea about this, just to give you a little bit of a lay of the land, if you will, if you are injured while working in Illinois or pretty much any state, you will be covered by workers' compensation. And workers' compensation, while it is great and it serves a very essential role, it does not necessarily cover you fully for your injuries.
Jonathan Rosenfeld:
And so today I am going to talk with Jerry about what a third-party case is, what situations may give rise to a third-party case. And then we're going to go through some, some sample third-party cases, if you will. And this is a really important topic. If you are any person who is injured while working or has a family member who is injured while working, a lot of times, these happen on construction sites or other situations where there may be multiple parties involved. So this is really important information. But first off, I just want to introduce Jerry and I want to really thank him for a taking the time out of his extremely busy schedule to join me today. So thank you, Jerry,
Gerald Bekkerman:
Of course, John, happy to help. I appreciate you having me on the podcast. One of my favorite topics, third-party claims and work injuries, kind of the bread and butter of our firm and something that a lot of people probably not a lot of knowledge on and miss out on opportunities for more recovery financially. So it's a really good topic. I'm happy to answer any questions.
Jonathan Rosenfeld:
Thank you. Well, I guess to begin with, if you are injured on the job in the state of Illinois, you are covered under workers' compensation and-
Gerald Bekkerman:
Correct.
Jonathan Rosenfeld:
We can have a whole podcast, I guess at one point about workers' compensation, but you're essentially entitled to three things with workers' comp in Illinois. You're entitled to basically your temporary total disability while you're unable to work, you're entitled to your medical bills, medical expenses related to your injuries, and then you're entitled to a lump sum payment, which is essentially a scheduled payment based on the type of injury that you sustained and the amount of money that you were making at the time that you were injured. What this does not cover though, is it does not cover pain and suffering. It does not cover past or future wage loss. It does not cover disability.
Jonathan Rosenfeld:
It does not cover a lot of what we sort of refer to as non-economic damages or even economic damages. It's really basically intended to keep people from falling into a situation where they're destitute and completely reliant on the social support system of the state and the federal government if they're involved in a work injury. So while workers' comp does serve a vital role, today I want to talk with Jerry about a situation where there may be an entity or a party involved who's responsible for your injury who may not be or is not necessarily your direct employer. So Jerry, I think the best way to sort of get into this for those of us who haven't gone to law school is to really just maybe give a couple examples of what a third-party case may be because I think that may be a lot more illustrative than trying to explain the intricacies of this and the complexity of the law to someone. So can you just sort of give maybe a couple examples of a third-party claim?
Gerald Bekkerman:
Sure, sure. Of course. So the work comp you described, great. I mean, that's a no-fault. If you get hurt on the job in the state of Illinois, you're going to be entitled to two-thirds of your weekly wages up to a certain limit, your medical bills to be paid, and in the end, there's a formula that's statutory that gives you some amount of money. It's not going to be significant. There's no compensation for pain and suffering or non-economic damages or scarring or any of these things. But third-party cases is when you get hurt on the job, you can't sue your employer, but somebody else that's also on your job site that's not your employer, you don't work for them, contributes to or causes exclusively your injury.
Gerald Bekkerman:
So if you're a delivery driver and you pull up to a loading dock, and you're unloading your freight. And at the warehouse you're delivering to, some guy operating a forklift runs you over because they don't know how to operate a forklift. You can sue the warehouse for their employee's negligence and running you over with the forklift.
Gerald Bekkerman:
If you're delivering a beer to a bar, when you have to carry the beer downstairs into the coolers and there's no handrails, or the handrail broke, or there's slippery stairs and nobody put out a wet floor sign, and you slip and you fall down all those stairs and break a bunch of bones, yes, that happened on the job. But if it wasn't for the bar's negligence and making sure those stairs are safe, not slippery and up to code, you wouldn't have gotten hurt. You have a case against the owner of the bar, the manager, whoever.
Gerald Bekkerman:
If you're on a construction site... a lot of cases like these in our office... and you fall off a scaffold while you're a mason like brick, but the scaffold was set up by the general contractor on the site, but it was set up poorly. Scaffolding was loose, whatever, and the thing collapses, you go down, you fall, you break your wrist. You can't do masonry work for maybe forever or just for a year or two. You have a third-party claim against the general contractor, the one that's overseeing the project, the one that put up the scaffold.
Gerald Bekkerman:
In those three scenarios... and there could be tons of those kinds of similar situations... you can Sue the insurance of the property owner, the construction manager, the forklift operator, the warehouse, whoever for causing an injury to you while you were in the course of your employment.
Gerald Bekkerman:
In those situations, you get pain and suffering. You get lost wages without any statutory factors about what you can and can't make. Your full wages can be recoverable. You get scarring. If you're scarred, you get loss of enjoyment of life. If you used to be a marathon runner, because of a knee injury caused by the scaffolding collapse, you can never run again, you're entitled to those non-economic damages plus your medical bills. So it really opens you up to something that's no different than the damages you'd recover in a car or a truck accident against the third-party insurance company.
Jonathan Rosenfeld:
I mean, I think one of the things that people who suffer a work-related injury may not fully grasp is that the benefits you are entitled to under work comp are generally very limited. A lot of times people are very... They sort of have sticker shock when they're like, "What? My finger was broken in four spots. I can't grasp a pen anymore. I can't type anymore. I can't sleep because of my finger," very legitimate complaints for a significant injury. But at the end of the day, they're very much capped out on what they can recover under work comp.
Jonathan Rosenfeld:
And so in a situation where another entity may have caused or contributed to their injury, you as their lawyer can go after that party and pursue them for the full amount of their dam