Why an Oakland Work Injury Lawyer Will Not Take Your Case?
If you have been injured at the workplace or contracted an illness because of work conditions, you are likely to file for a workers’ compensation claim. This is justified given the enormous amounts of money you’d spend on medical care and rehabilitation. Add to this the wage losses and we are talking about a situation where your life goes haywire. In worst cases, you may suffer a partial or full disability that can put you through emotional trauma and financial hardships. The first thing to do in such cases is to get in touch with an experienced work injury lawyer and file your claim. But there are instances when an attorney would simply refuse to take up your case. Let us now look at some of the reasons why an attorney can refuse to take up your case –
#1 Your Injury Didn’t Take Places at Work
One of the first criteria for an injury to qualify for workers’ compensation is that it should happen while at work. Any injury you suffer on work premises would qualify for the same. Any injury you suffer on duty outside the premises would also qualify for such claims such as you suffered an accident while delivering goods to a client. But suffering an injury while returning home doesn’t entitle you to such claims. If the workers’ comp attorney doesn’t see merit in your workers’ compensation claims they won’t take your case.
# 2 You Didn’t Notify Your Employer on Time
One of the first things that you need to do after suffering a work injury is to notify your employer. Your employer won’t be able to carry out the necessary accident investigation and both your employer and their insurer can deny that the injury happened at the workplace. In such circumstances, even the best among work injury lawyer Oakland wouldn’t be able to help you out in the case. They would simply turn down your case given the higher odds of failure.
# 3 You Aren’t Sharing All The Details
An attorney can decide to fight your case or reject it during the first consultation. He/she needs to get a detailed picture of all the events that have taken place from the day of injury until you have called the law firm.
# 4 You Didn’t Follow The Prescribed Procedure for Treatment
In most cases, you will need to first consult a doctor or medical institution that is contracted by your employer and their insurer. While you have the freedom to choose a treating doctor at a later stage you need to follow certain prescribed procedure for this. The success of the treatment and recovery from your injury rests upon the treatment plan as advised by the treating doctor. You need to follow this religiously. If you don’t follow this advice you are weakening your case for workers’ compensation and in such case, an attorney is most likely to turn you down.
# 5 The Claim Isn’t Financially Viable
You have to appreciate the fact that an Oakland injury lawyer would put in a lot of hard work into the case. In typical cases they would charge you a percentage of the compensation you’d receive. If the compensation sum is too low the lawyer may not be able to earn much. In such cases, they are likely to turn your case down since the investment outweigh the rewards.
To conclude, these are some of the reasons why an Oakland injury lawyer may refuse to take your case. But you shouldn’t be disheartened after being turned down by the first attorney. You should shop around and talk to a few more law firms as attorneys often have a different point of view on the same matter and look at every case from different perspectives.
Summary – In this write-up, we discuss some of the scenarios where an Oakland work injury lawyer may refuse to take your case.
