Articles Posted in Construction Accident Injury

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Depression is a disease that affects many Americans. In recent years as the unemployment rate has skyrocketed, depression has increased as well. Workers who find themselves in vastly different life circumstances than they had planned for, are likely to begin to suffer from depression even if they never have experienced problems in the past. A person who is injured while on the job and finds themselves disabled is more likely than any other unemployed person to suffer from depression related illnesses. A disabled Nassau worker has gone virtually overnight from being a strong active employed person to being bedridden for several days or weeks and unemployed. The new wording to the Family Medical Leave Act states that if a person is catastrophically injured on the job, their company is only required to keep their job open for them for twelve weeks. At the end of the twelve week period, that injured employee may be fired and a new person hired to fill their job. The days of companies and even government entities standing behind an employee who has been injured on the job are over.

That was the situation that one New York highway department worker found himself in when he was struck by a car while at work. He sustained serious personal injury from this accident in December of 1995. His spinal injury left him disabled and unable to return to work. He began to suffer from depression and in January of 1998, his wife found him dead by his own hand. She filed a request for workers compensation death benefits. Her contention was that her husband committed suicide because of his depression which was directly related to the accident at work. A Workers’ Compensation Law Judge agreed that the wife should be granted death benefits. The Workers’ Compensation Board determined that she should not be awarded death benefits because they found that there was no causal relationship associated to the accident and the husband’s suicide. The wife filed an appeal of their decision.

She based her appeal on the fact that death benefits are deemed appropriate if the work injury results in insanity, brain injury, brain deterioration or a pattern of mental deterioration which may culminate in suicide. She also contends that there was no lawyer on the board to evaluate the application of law in this case. According to the Laws of New York State, in order for this woman to be awarded compensation, she must show that there was a causal link between the accident and her husband’s suicide. In order to demonstrate a causal link, she must present competent medical proof that her husband suffered from a mental deterioration brought on by the accident that ended in him taking his own life. The board is required to give more credence to an opinion based on medical evidence, than they are their own opinions that are not based on medical knowledge.

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A Manhattan contractor who owned a home improvement company obtained a contract to renovate a couple’s home. The man worked on the couple’s home: he was up on the roof supervising the repair of the roof when he slipped and fell. He hit his head and sustained a brain injury.

He filed a personal injury complaint against Workmen’s Compensation, against his own company and against the couple who owned the house he was renovating. In that personal injury case, trial was held to determine if the brain injury sustained by the contractor qualifies as a grave injury under the Workmen’s Compensation Law.

During the trial, the contractor adduced proof regarding the extent and nature of his brain injury. His medical experts testified that the contractor had cognitive dysfunction which permanently disabled him from doing any work. The insurance company provided its own expert who conducted a neuropsychological evaluation of the contractor. The expert of the insurance company found that the contractor’s brain injury was severe and traumatic such that he has lost the ability to make decisions required in daily life.

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These are three consolidated cases of employees who were all injured while they were performing tasks directly related to their employment. The only question raised in these cases is whether or not the employees here have suffered grave injury; that is, whether they suffered a brain injurythat results in permanent total disability. The question of what can be considered a permanent total disability has to be defined.

In the first case a Bronx ironworker fell about 19 feet to the ground. He was standing on a ladder installing a steel cupola. He was an employee of an iron works company which was then rendering iron works for a night club. The ironworker hit his head and sustained a brain injury.

He filed a suit in damages under the Worker’s Compensation Law against his employer, iron works company and the night club which hired the iron works company.

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Head trauma, by medical standards, has to have a broad definition, New York Brain Injury Lawyers have learned. It can refer to any trauma to the body above the lower border of the mandible. In fact, injury to the face or jaw is considered different from head trauma, even though injury to one often causes injury to the other. For these purposes, the head includes the scalp, skull, meninges, blood vessels, and brain. Trauma is used to mean an external force of energy, like a mechanical force, that causes physical injury to any or all of the tissues that make up the head. Other injuries, such as those caused by electrical, thermal, or chemical energy are usually considered to be a separate sort of injury, treated as burns, but deep burns can often cause injuries that require neurosurgical care. Such construction accident injuries, however, are quite rare.

For the purposes of a study to collect data on head injury, there is no agreed definition, New York Brain Injury Lawyers have learned, which makes it nearly impossible to compare studies when they do occur. It is important, therefore, to find a definition that fits. Some have stressed the separation of head injury from brain injury, with the latter meaning neurological damage. These same sources also advocate the identification of patients who sustain ‘neuro-trauma of public health consequence’ where there was a high chance of ongoing neurological impairment which would require medical or nursing care.

Sometimes, however, it is better to keep the definition a little boarder, because many head injury patients often seem minor at first, but later show evidence of much greater injury. Hospitals in Long island and New York City are aware of the situation.

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