Working as an employee or contractor at a work site means that you could be exposed to hazardous materials and dangerous situations. If you work with electrical equipment, then you need to rely on your knowledge of the equipment, your safety precautions, and others to make sure you don’t get electrocuted. If even one part of your communication breaks down, you could be injured by touching a live wire.
Electrical injuries can happen even when you’re not thinking about being around electricity at all. If you’re drilling into the ground and lines are under the ground, you could hit one and be electrocuted. Your employer should be making calls before you work in an area to make sure there are no buried utility lines, to prevent these types of accidents from happening. If he or she didn’t do so, your employer could be guilty of neglect and breaking safety protocols.
After you’ve been hurt, you’ll likely be able to seek workers’ compensation since you were hurt on the job. In some cases, there are other ways you can seek out compensation. For example, if your equipment backfired and electrocuted you due to frayed wires that were a manufacturing defect, the manufacturer could be held liable.
If you drill into the ground and strike a pipe that the city didn’t list, the city may be liable. There are many things to consider before you take a settlement or make a claim, so looking over the case from all angles is important. Our site has more information on electrical injuries, so you can start thinking about how you want to handle this problem.
