Almost every state in the country requires companies with a certain number of employees and/or performing work in certain types of industries to purchase workers’ compensation insurance for those employees through a system governed by the state. However, Texas is the sole exception to that trend, as the Lone Star State’s laws allows companies to opt out of this workers’ comp system and become “non-subscribers” instead.
If your employer is a non-subscriber, that does not necessarily mean they cannot be held financially liable for an injury you suffer on the job, but it does change the way in which the process of seeking compensation works. Those changes can be tough to manage without a skilled work accident attorney’s help. Fortunately, you have help available from a seasoned Cypress non-subscriber accident lawyer with years of experience fighting and winning on behalf of workers much like you.
If someone is covered by workers’ compensation insurance in Texas or anywhere else, their employer automatically assumes liability to pay for certain damages stemming from any work-related injury or illness one of their employees suffers. In exchange, that employer gains legal immunity from being held civilly liable for workplace injuries, to the point that their employees cannot directly sue their employer over an injury even if it resulted directly from the employer’s negligence.
Conversely, non-subscribers do not automatically assume liability for any damages stemming from work-related injuries. But because they are not immune from civil liability, a Cypress non-subscriber accident attorney can help an injured worker sue their employer directly over that injury if that employer holds any fault whatsoever. In this way, filing a non-subscriber claim is both harder than filing a workers’ comp claim and easier than filing a traditional personal injury claim, the latter of which requires the named “defendant” to hold a majority of the fault for an injury.
Another key difference between workers’ comp and non-subscriber claims in Texas is what kinds of losses can be factored into each type of claim. As mentioned above, workers’ comp makes employers automatically liable for damages stemming from workplace injuries. The only damages that can be recovered through a workers’ claim are reasonably necessary medical expenses, a portion of lost wages during recovery, and potentially long-term benefits for permanent loss of working capacity.
Non-subscriber claims, on the other hand, allow recovery for all the same economic and non-economic losses that a traditional personal injury claim can include, such as:
A non-subscriber injury lawyer in Cypress can identify all the damages which should be incorporated into a specific claim and maximizing the compensation available from an employer and/or their private insurance provider.
In many ways, the non-subscriber laws in Texas are very friendly to business owners and very unfriendly to the people who work for them. However, if you understand and can enforce the rights you have under state law, you may be able to recover much more compensation through a non-subscriber claim than you would ever get through workers’ comp.
Assistance from a knowledgeable Cypress non-subscriber accident lawyer will be essential to getting the best possible resolution from your case. Learn more by calling today.
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