Check Out Our Podcast: The Verdict
Does it matter whose fault it was when you’re injured on the job? It’s one of the most common (and most misunderstood) questions in workers’ comp, and in this episode of The Verdict aims to set the record straight.
Workers’ comp attorney Brian Groesser explains why fault doesn’t matter in most North Carolina workers’ compensation claims. Whether you slipped up, violated a safety rule, or did something dumb like donuts in a gravel lot, your case can still be compensable—because comp is designed as a no-fault system.
We’ll compare this to traditional personal injury cases (like slip-and-falls), where negligence can kill your case, and break down real-world scenarios where people wrongly assume they can’t recover.
Here’s what we discuss in this episode:
❌ Myth: If it’s your fault, you can’t file a claim
⚖️ Workers’ comp is a no-fault system by design
🚜 Real story: a guy doing donuts in a Bobcat… and still eligible
📖 Safety rule violations don’t automatically disqualify you
🧠 Only intentional self-harm is a true legal disqualifier
Workers comp, fault, injuries, employers, insurance, workers comp claims
Learn more about how Speaks Law Firm can help you: https://www.speakslaw.com/
Schedule your FREE case review: https://www.speakslaw.com/our-team/r-clarke-speaks/#contactFormTarget
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00:00
I'm Clark speaks, the catastrophic injury lawyer, welcome to the verdict. Welcome back to the verdict. I'm Clark speaks. I'm here with Brian. Grocer, Brian, we get this call sometimes I was, I was involved in some kind of an accident at work. It was not my fault. It was not my fault. This thing happened. And what I always, you know, want to talk to somebody about is, you know, does it matter if it's your fault or not so in this, in this workplace incident, is fault a necessary component of A if it was the other guy's fault, is that a necessary component of a worker's compensation claim, no fault is not taken into consideration when it comes to confident. Let me explain why. If you were at a retail store, let's just again, use target as an example, and you slipped and fell. One of Target's defenses in those cases would be an open and obvious like you were negligent. If you weren't texting away on your phone, you should have seen that substance on the floor. If you were just paying attention, as a reasonable person would be paying attention, you would never have slipped and fell. And so these are the standards that are that take place in an ordinary tort case, in a premises liability case, outside of the world of workers compensation. So if a normal patron is walking through Target and they call us to say, I was I slipped and fell at Target, you know, can I recover? That's the analysis that you're going through right now. Right? Exactly. That analysis is thrown out the window when it comes to workers comp fault as an employee, it's thrown out because it's a trade off, okay? So that target, in that first incidence, they may be on the hook for millions of dollars in damage, depending on what the damages are, right, the severity of the injury, all of those things. But on the flip side, the customer may recover nothing. If they were contributorially negligent, it's possible they recover nothing. And so it's a wide range right, where the target has a vast amount of exposure, and also the plaintiff in that particular case, who was the customer may recover nothing. Comp is a compromise between those two, all right, it allows the employee, like I've said, that the employee is kind of forced into workers comp. If you get hurt at work, it is automatically put under workers compensation. You can't sue them in superior court, like we were talking about a customer suing a retail business that they had an injury in. Right? An employee remedy, it's an exclusive remedy. If an employee gets injured at work, they have to go through the workers comp system. Now, there are pluses and minuses to that. One of the pluses to it is that you don't have that zero if you were negligent in any way, you can still recover, right? You still are able to recover under workers comp, regardless of your negligent there's a very finite exception to it that really doesn't apply very often, if at all. It's not really worth even talking about. The general rule is that negligence has no bearing on your case. From your own perspective, you were negligent, you can still recover as long as it fit within the accident. It was within the course and scope and it was arising out of this is a perfect example for those that wonder about it. There was this case several years ago that went to the court of appeals, I think it even went to the Supreme Court, and they were using a front loader, I believe, Bobcat front loader, something like that, at a construction site. And at the end of the day, the guy was a gravel lot, and he was using it to lift materials up to the second floor of this building, and he was supposed to take the equipment back to the shed at the end of the day. Well, on his way to the shed, he decided it would be a great idea to do donuts in the gravel parking lot with one of these front loaders before taking it to the shed right. Just wanted to blow off some steam, whatever, and did it, of course. What inevitably happened, the thing tipped over, crushed him, substantially severe injuries to him. And of course, the employer is saying this guy, he's not hired to do donuts. He knows he's not supposed to do donuts. That's not something that is within his job description. Ultimately, what the Court of Appeals said in that case is, we're not here to observe how negligently he operated the equipment if he was authorized to operate the equipment and he performed it in a negligent way, he was still authorized to use it, as long as there's an exception. I won't go too far into the woods or the weeds on this one. But if a then President supervisor says, Hey, Johnny, stop doing donuts and you keep doing the donuts. Now we're not talking about negligence. We're talking about you ignoring what your supervisor your supervisor is directly telling you to do. That almost gets into the scope of employment. Yes, exactly, right. That's exactly what it is. But the general rule is negligence doesn't apply in workers companies, not a barrier just because you were negligent or just because the employer was negligent, either one doesn't really apply in terms of whether or not your case is compensable or not. So this is critical, because people call and they say, Hey, I want you to know I was careful and I got hurt at work. And I always want to reach out to them and go, that doesn't matter, but that person called, What I worry about is the 1000s of people who don't call because they were hurt at work, and they think that they are some.
05:00
How responsible and therefore not entitled to recover? Yes, so many cases would be automatically thrown out if you violated a safety rule, right? Like if, by the book, you did something that was on page 79 of the handbook wasn't allowed. Well, you're given a handbook on day one. Most of us don't read line by line, what the handbook says and yeah, maybe there's something on page 79 that says that you needed to do this in this particular manner in order to protect yourself, and you just happened not to do it in that particular matter, by definition, you violated the safety rule that was in place. But does that mean that your comp case isn't compensable? No, it is still likely compensable, even though you weren't, by the book, following the safety protocols. Now, the exception to all of this is we've been talking about negligence. You can't go and intentionally injure yourself, right? You can't listen to this podcast and be like, Well, gee. Clark says that I can be negligent at work and go ahead and get in recover, if you neg, if you intentionally try to injure yourself at work. That is an absolute bar. There's a statute that says that we're talking about negligence, that you were trying to do your job in the right way. You just happen to be negligent about something, and you know now you're afraid to file a claim, or you're afraid to call an attorney because you feel like you violated a safety rule, or that you were negligent in some way, or the employer said, Hey, this is your fault, and you feel like it's your fault, therefore I can't have a comp claim. None of that's true. Fault does not matter, as a general rule of fault does not matter in workers' comp cases. Thank you, Brian, that's helpful. When we come back, I want to talk to you about the use of controlled substances and impairment and how that might impact a worker's compensation claim. Join us next time. Thanks for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe and follow us to stay up to date with our weekly episodes. We'll see you next time, bye.
00:00
I'm Clark speaks, the catastrophic injury lawyer, welcome to the verdict. Welcome back to the verdict. I'm Clark speaks. I'm here with Brian. Grocer, Brian, we get this call sometimes I was, I was involved in some kind of an accident at work. It was not my fault. It was not my fault. This thing happened. And what I always, you know, want to talk to somebody about is, you know, does it matter if it's your fault or not so in this, in this workplace incident, is fault a necessary component of A if it was the other guy's fault, is that a necessary component of a worker's compensation claim, no fault is not taken into consideration when it comes to confident. Let me explain why. If you were at a retail store, let's just again, use target as an example, and you slipped and fell. One of Target's defenses in those cases would be an open and obvious like you were negligent. If you weren't texting away on your phone, you should have seen that substance on the floor. If you were just paying attention, as a reasonable person would be paying attention, you would never have slipped and fell. And so these are the standards that are that take place in an ordinary tort case, in a premises liability case, outside of the world of workers compensation. So if a normal patron is walking through Target and they call us to say, I was I slipped and fell at Target, you know, can I recover? That's the analysis that you're going through right now. Right? Exactly. That analysis is thrown out the window when it comes to workers comp fault as an employee, it's thrown out because it's a trade off, okay? So that target, in that first incidence, they may be on the hook for millions of dollars in damage, depending on what the damages are, right, the severity of the injury, all of those things. But on the flip side, the customer may recover nothing. If they were contributorially negligent, it's possible they recover nothing. And so it's a wide range right, where the target has a vast amount of exposure, and also the plaintiff in that particular case, who was the customer may recover nothing. Comp is a compromise between those two, all right, it allows the employee, like I've said, that the employee is kind of forced into workers comp. If you get hurt at work, it is automatically put under workers compensation. You can't sue them in superior court, like we were talking about a customer suing a retail business that they had an injury in. Right? An employee remedy, it's an exclusive remedy. If an employee gets injured at work, they have to go through the workers comp system. Now, there are pluses and minuses to that. One of the pluses to it is that you don't have that zero if you were negligent in any way, you can still recover, right? You still are able to recover under workers comp, regardless of your negligent there's a very finite exception to it that really doesn't apply very often, if at all. It's not really worth even talking about. The general rule is that negligence has no bearing on your case. From your own perspective, you were negligent, you can still recover as long as it fit within the accident. It was within the course and scope and it was arising out of this is a perfect example for those that wonder about it. There was this case several years ago that went to the court of appeals, I think it even went to the Supreme Court, and they were using a front loader, I believe, Bobcat front loader, something like that, at a construction site. And at the end of the day, the guy was a gravel lot, and he was using it to lift materials up to the second floor of this building, and he was supposed to take the equipment back to the shed at the end of the day. Well, on his way to the shed, he decided it would be a great idea to do donuts in the gravel parking lot with one of these front loaders before taking it to the shed right. Just wanted to blow off some steam, whatever, and did it, of course. What inevitably happened, the thing tipped over, crushed him, substantially severe injuries to him. And of course, the employer is saying this guy, he's not hired to do donuts. He knows he's not supposed to do donuts. That's not something that is within his job description. Ultimately, what the Court of Appeals said in that case is, we're not here to observe how negligently he operated the equipment if he was authorized to operate the equipment and he performed it in a negligent way, he was still authorized to use it, as long as there's an exception. I won't go too far into the woods or the weeds on this one. But if a then President supervisor says, Hey, Johnny, stop doing donuts and you keep doing the donuts. Now we're not talking about negligence. We're talking about you ignoring what your supervisor your supervisor is directly telling you to do. That almost gets into the scope of employment. Yes, exactly, right. That's exactly what it is. But the general rule is negligence doesn't apply in workers companies, not a barrier just because you were negligent or just because the employer was negligent, either one doesn't really apply in terms of whether or not your case is compensable or not. So this is critical, because people call and they say, Hey, I want you to know I was careful and I got hurt at work. And I always want to reach out to them and go, that doesn't matter, but that person called, What I worry about is the 1000s of people who don't call because they were hurt at work, and they think that they are some.
05:00
How responsible and therefore not entitled to recover? Yes, so many cases would be automatically thrown out if you violated a safety rule, right? Like if, by the book, you did something that was on page 79 of the handbook wasn't allowed. Well, you're given a handbook on day one. Most of us don't read line by line, what the handbook says and yeah, maybe there's something on page 79 that says that you needed to do this in this particular manner in order to protect yourself, and you just happened not to do it in that particular matter, by definition, you violated the safety rule that was in place. But does that mean that your comp case isn't compensable? No, it is still likely compensable, even though you weren't, by the book, following the safety protocols. Now, the exception to all of this is we've been talking about negligence. You can't go and intentionally injure yourself, right? You can't listen to this podcast and be like, Well, gee. Clark says that I can be negligent at work and go ahead and get in recover, if you neg, if you intentionally try to injure yourself at work. That is an absolute bar. There's a statute that says that we're talking about negligence, that you were trying to do your job in the right way. You just happen to be negligent about something, and you know now you're afraid to file a claim, or you're afraid to call an attorney because you feel like you violated a safety rule, or that you were negligent in some way, or the employer said, Hey, this is your fault, and you feel like it's your fault, therefore I can't have a comp claim. None of that's true. Fault does not matter, as a general rule of fault does not matter in workers' comp cases. Thank you, Brian, that's helpful. When we come back, I want to talk to you about the use of controlled substances and impairment and how that might impact a worker's compensation claim. Join us next time. Thanks for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe and follow us to stay up to date with our weekly episodes. We'll see you next time, bye.
