What does industrial negligence mean?
Industrial negligence is a claim for compensation arising from injuries in your place of work. The key difference is most people can not pursue industrial negligence because those entitlements are replaced by Workers’ Compensation under the Return to Work Act. Although, in certain circumstances workers may have access to industrial negligence compensation in addition to Workers’ Compensation. Mainly those types of workers would be workers engaged by a labour hire company, where they’re working at a place that’s not their employer or for people that aren’t their employer. In some cases under the Return to Work Act, if you’ve sustained a significant or serious injury you can still pursue a negligence claim against your employer.
What should you do?
Come and get legal advice straight away. If there are avenues for industrial negligence, it’s normally important to investigate those as soon as possible. The key difference between and industrial negligence claim and a Workers Compensation claim is that for workers compensation you only need to show your injury at work. With an industrial negligence claim, you need to show that someone has done something wrong, or hasn’t done something right that led to you causing your injury. That requires a lot more factual investigation, obtaining documents, speaking to witnesses. The sooner you are to start that process, the sooner you are to get the information you need to make the claim successful. If people think they’re in that category of making an industrial negligence claim, is come and speak to someone straight away.
What should you bring to the first meeting with a lawyer?
Any paperwork they have regarding their employment relationship, payslips, contracts of employment, and letters of engagement. If any documentation was generated when they were injured, such as an accident report, incident report form, notes from doctors, hospital notes. These types of documents are a great starting point to take to give initial advice for us to take from there.
If you want to find out more about if you qualify for an industrial negligence claim, contact DBH Personal Injury Lawyers today on 1800 324 324, or send us a message.