What if Someone Else Caused Your On-the-Job Injury- A Description of the Workers’ Compensation Third Party Personal Injury Claim


If you have an injury at work it is called an on-the-job injury and should qualify you to receive workers’ compensation benefits. If your claim is denied or handled unfairly you need to consult a workers’ compensation claimants’ lawyer;  this is a peoples’ lawyer and not an insurance or corporate lawyer. Sometimes an on-the-job injury is caused, entirely or partly, by someone other than your employer or co-employee.  When this happens, you may qualify to receive workers’ compensation benefits AND damages in a personal injury case. Attorneys call these cases “third party cases” because they are cases against a “third party”, meaning someone other than your employer.  While Oregon laws and statutes protect workers’ employers from suits against employers (except in rare situations where the injury is intentionally caused or the employer fails to have workers’ compensation insurance, Oregon laws and statutes allow a worker to bring a personal injury case against a third party for out-of-pocket or economic damages, pain and suffering damages, and even punitive damages, at the same time the employee pursues his or her employer with a workers’ compensation claim.

Examples of situations where a worker can bring a third party case in addition to a workers’ compensation claim include where a worker is hurt by an employee of another contractor or an injury occurs in a car wreck with a negligent driver. Sometimes a worker is hurt because of a defective tool that breaks or does not work properly and this case is called a products liability personal injury case. Even occupational disease cases may qualify; for example if someone develops mesothelioma from asbestos exposure, or a corporation causes a gas leak that injures someone. A typical scenario is where on a construction site a contractor hurts someone else’s employee with a forklift or due to a faulty platform or rigging.

The upside for the injured worker with a  third party case is that they get their workers comp benefits AND economic and pain and suffering damages. While the workers comp carrier has a statutory right to be repaid what they paid for the comp claim, usually the third party claim allows greater damages since pain and suffering damages include money payments for inconvenience, disruption of life plans, scarring and physical impairments, and the injured person’s spouse can also file a separate personal injury lawsuit for damages for loss of consortium, which means loss to the family caused by the work injury.

It is important to select an attorney who is experienced in serious injuries that are third party cases, and that the lawyer has expertise in both workers’ compensation law and personal injury trial law because the workers compensation system provides only limited benefits and the personal  injury case involves a greater level of damages, but also requires trial court expertise as the case must be filed in the state circuit court or federal district court. If a workers’ compensation case is litigated it happens in front of an administrative law judge in a hearing room, but in a third party personal injury case the injured person has a right to a jury trial in a court of law at the courthouse.

If you believe you may have a third party case it is important to speak to a lawyer as there are certain time limitations that are very technical. For example, if the case involves negligence then a lawsuit must be filed within two years of the date of injury. There are exceptions to these rules but obtaining legal assistance soon after the injury is important so that  an investigation into the injury can be conducted, co-workers interviewed, and the scene photographed to document what happened.

This post was written by Ray Thomas. Ray, a founding partner of downtown Portland’s Swanson, Thomas, Coon & Newton law firm, is a personal injury lawyer and pedestrian and bicycle law attorney.