What to do if I slipped on ice at work, broke my 2 front teeth and split my lower lip so my boss is giving worker’s comp but everybody is telling me sue to sue him?
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What to do if I slipped on ice at work, broke my 2 front teeth and split my lower lip so my boss is giving worker’s comp but everybody is telling me sue to sue him?
He did not salt the parking lot.
Asked on January 20, 2015 under Personal Injury, Michigan
Answers:
SJZ, Member, New York Bar / FreeAdvice Contributing Attorney
Answered 9 years ago | Contributor
If you take worker's comp, you cannot also sue--worker's comp is an alternative method of compensation, which offers certain advantages over suing (for example, no cost of a lawsuit; no waiting months or longer for a lawsuit to be resolved; no risk of losing and not getting anything), but it is, by law, an *alternative*. That is, you get worker's comp OR you sue--you can't do both.
Also, even if you chose to sue, it's not a given that you'd win. To win, your boss (the company) would have had to have been at fault. That generally means that they would have had to have been negligent, or unreasonably careless. That in turn means that the issue is, whether given the size of the parking lot, the amount of ice, how long the lot was icy, the spot that was icy, etc., it was careless to not salt...or whether, under the circumstances, it was reasonable that someone would not have salted at that time. You may win--that is, it may have been negligent to not salt; but you can't assume that just because the lot was not salted automatically means that you'd win.
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