Watch on YouTube6:58Get The Legal Help You Need!
Video Summary
Following a workplace accident, an individual’s most urgent priority should be ensuring their personal safety and obtaining immediate medical treatment. Once stabilized, the injured party is encouraged to complete an incident report while details remain vivid to ensure the facts are documented accurately. Seeking legal counsel early in the process is highly recommended because insurance companies are experienced at navigating these claims, whereas employees are often at a significant disadvantage. Professional guidance helps victims avoid costly mistakes that could jeopardize their health benefits or financial recovery. Attorneys act as coaches, providing necessary information so that workers can make informed decisions on equal footing with adjusters. Ultimately, legal support protects families from settling for inadequate compensation or losing their employment status without proper representation.
Transcription of the Video
Clark Speaks: I’m Clark Speaks, the catastrophic injury lawyer. Welcome to The Verdict. I’m here with Brian Grosser. Brian is talking to me about workers’ compensation claims in North Carolina. Brian, let me ask you this: someone is hurt on the job, right? It just happened. It seems to me the first thing they need to do is make sure they’re safe, make sure they’re out of harm’s way, and make sure they’re reaching the medical attention that they need. What are the second, third, and fourth things that they need to do?
Brian Grosser: Well, let me walk through it. Let’s just say that you got hurt at work. The first thing you need to do is, as you said, make sure that you’re okay. Don’t worry about filling out paperwork if you’re actively bleeding out of your arm and you need to go to the ER immediately. Go to the ER; secure the treatment. But if you have to fill that incident report out, it’s recommended to do it as soon as you can because that is when everyone’s memory is fresh and everyone remembers exactly what happened, in theory. Secure the treatment, and then my recommendation would be, you know, call us. Give us a call and say, “Hey, I got hurt; this is what happened.” Because, again, we are your advocate in the sense that this is a system you’re probably not familiar with. The other side is—whether this is the employer’s first injury or not—it certainly isn’t the insurance carrier’s first injury.
Clark Speaks: Let me ask you a quick question. You say “secure the treatment.” Do you mean secure the initial treatment or finish treating?
Brian Grosser: No, I mean secure the initial treatment. If you need to go to urgent care, go to urgent care. If you need to go to the ER, go to the ER. Secure the initial treatment. Oftentimes, that’s directed by the employer, too. They’ll say, “Hey, you need to go to this particular urgent care or hospital.” Whatever it is, just secure the treatment. Your health is the number one priority. We care about your health more than anything else. But after you secure that initial treatment, that’s when things start coming into play, like: what are your restrictions? Are you going to be able to come back to work? What is the referral? Who are you dealing with as an adjuster? In that scenario, it makes a lot of sense to contact an attorney. And here’s why: it doesn’t cost you anything upfront. There is no retainer fee when it comes to having an attorney; we are there at the beginning to help you through this process.
Now, there’s an attorney fee on the back end of it once we help you through the workers’ compensation process, but when you first call us, we’re there as your guide to walk you step-by-step through an unfamiliar process. Workers’ comp is our job. Let us take over from that point so that you can reach an optimal outcome out of a situation you didn’t ask for in the first place.
Clark Speaks: Is it the case that sometimes people call and we help them through those early stages, and we tell them, “Here’s what you do today; here’s how you can move through this process,” and ultimately, even if we don’t resolve the case, they don’t owe us for that initial advice or consultation?
Brian Grosser: Yes. I’d rather you take the right first steps on the right path, whether we represent you or not, than take the wrong first steps and end up five miles down the road on the wrong path. If I can put you on the right path to start, maybe you’ll give me a call on mile two or three. We want people to be able to make informed decisions. Right now, they may be at a disadvantage in terms of what they know and how the process works. We want them to have the information they need so they can make good decisions and be on equal footing with the insurance company and the adjuster.
It’s like being a star athlete without a coach. You’re about to play a team that has athletes and a head coach who is going to shape the game. As an attorney, you’re a coach. You are putting your client in the right position to succeed. It’s like me trying to change my own oil. Could I do it? Maybe. But I’d be at a disadvantage compared to a pit crew that does it all day, every day. In this situation, the downside isn’t just a trip to the mechanic; it might cost a family thousands of dollars.
Clark Speaks: Well, let’s keep in mind too, it might cost you the car.
Brian Grosser: Exactly. A lot of workers’ compensation cases ultimately result in a settlement. A lot of those settlements require you to resign from your job. If you are in a position where you’re settling for a low amount and you have to resign, you’re in a difficult spot compared to where you were before you got hurt. That can happen if you trust the people on the other side who are advocating for their own interests. The insurance carrier often views you as a liability; they don’t want to settle a case with someone who then goes back to work the next day and remains a liability. That is why they often ask for a resignation.