Kansas City Workers' Compensation Law Blog

After a car collision, people may suffer a number of immediate consequences. For example, they may be in a lot of pain, struggle to pay hospital bills and be left with an injury that leaves them immobilized for weeks or even months. However, there are a number of long-term consequences that may come with a car accident, such as a victim losing his or her ability to work in a particular field ever again. Some people are never able to return to the workplace in any capacity, while others may not have the ability to perform certain job duties, essentially destroying their career. This can be mentally and financially devastating, to say the least, and highlights why it is so important for victims to stand up for their rights.

Numerous challenges may arise for auto accident victims, whether they lose the ability to walk, cannot use their arm, suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and other forms of mental hardship or experience some other injury which prevents them from returning to their previous position. Some people have an especially hard time adjusting to life without their job, which can make it seem as if they have lost their identity after an auto accident. Moreover, these difficulties can have an emotional and financial impact on their entire family.

Workplace accidents happen in all sorts of ways, from falling off of a ladder on a construction site to sustaining a serious burn while working in an office. Likewise, slip-and-fall accidents happen for many reasons, whether someone falls down on ice while walking along the sidewalk or they slip on something that was spilled on the floor of a retail store. Sometimes, people are involved in slip-and-fall accidents while they are working, and these accidents can be tough for various reasons. Not only are the financial consequences of these accidents often significant (medical bills, lost wages, and so forth), but injured workers may have to find a new career.

As with any workplace accident, it is essential for victims to take a careful look into what happened and determine which options they have. Some injured workers are able to apply for workers’ compensation, which can help with a wide variety of challenges they may be struggling with. It is important to determine why the accident occurred and whether or not another person was responsible for the mishap. Sadly, many workers’ lives have been upended in these accidents.

As a resident of Kansas or Missouri who has a disability that is severe enough to keep you out of the workplace, you may be looking for alternative ways to support yourself, and you may be considering applying for Social Security Disability benefits from the U.S. Social Security Administration. At the Law Office of Michael T. Joshi, we recognize that, in order to obtain these benefits, you first must qualify for them, and this involves meeting the administration’s strict definition of “disability.

According to the U.S. Social Security Administration, you must be able to showcase that your condition is, in fact, severe enough to warrant you receiving Social Security disability benefits. To do so, you must show that your disability is one that prevents you from performing even the most fundamental tasks relating to holding a job, such as standing, walking, remembering and so on. Furthermore, your condition must be one that will persist for at least a year or longer in order to meet the administration’s definition of “disability.”

Workers' compensation is an employment benefit that is an expectation of nearly all employed professionals in Kansas City. Given that having such coverage is a legal requirement, employers should not be shocked or upset when employees need to use it. Retaliating against an employee for seeking workers' compensation may be illegal, and could not only net an employer fines and other penalties, but also open it up to civil litigation. 

That is exactly what a Hawaii man chose to pursue after he was fired from his job as a firefighter. He claims that he was forced to deal with a hostile work environment imposed by his employer after he testified against his supervisors in an ethics hearing. Among the accusations made against his supervisors was that they were using company resources for their own personal businesses. Once the fact that he testified against them was uncovered, the man claims that his supervisors targeted him by demanding unnecessary drugs tests and not allowing him to work overtime. He claims that the stress led to him needing to take a leave of absence and file a workers' compensation claim. He believes that those actions gave the department a reason to fire him.