Warehouse Workers

Warehouses can be very dangerous places to work and over the years I have represented many warehouse workers due to on-the-job injuries.   By far the most common warehouse injury I see involves forklifts.   I have assisted several clients who suffered back and lower body damage when a co-worker driving the forklift was not paying attention.

In other cases, my clients have been experienced closed head injuries when a nearby forklift hit warehouse shelving, causing boxes and other materials to fall from overhead storage.

My warehouse worker clients also hurt their backs lifting heavy and awkward equipment, produce or palettes, and I have even seen a few client injured by chemical spills.

Three issues seem to arise in warehouse worker injury claims:

1. sometimes my client is the negligent party when the injury occurs.  This is not a problem under workers’ comp in that you are eligible for benefits even if you caused the accident, but, obviously the employer and insurance company are more likely to take an adversarial and hostile stance if you caused your own injury
2. warehouse workers tend to joke around and behave in an informal manner.   One of the insurance company’s defenses is something called “horseplay,” which means that they can deny your claim if they can show that you were engaged in non-work behavior.  Sometimes the question of whether behavior was horseplay or not can be a matter of line drawing and interpretation so I urge all my warehouse worker clients to speak to me prior to talking to their supervisor or any insurance adjuster
3. in some cases, a warehouse injury may occur during the overnight shift or when there are few or no witnesses.  As such it is crucial that you report your injury as soon as possible to protect your interests.

In this video I review a number of issues that I often see when representing warehouse workers.