Horse Play On The Job-Husband No Income!
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| Thu, 05-22-2008 - 10:38pm |
My husband was injured on the job caused by horse play instigated by two co-workers. He did not instigate the horse play nor did he want to participate in it. The assault took place inside the work place in full view of several people including the manager on duty. The injury caused was a torn miniscus and 80% torn ACL. This happened in January and he has been under a doctor's care on our own health insurance. He has been subjected to partial pay light-duty for approx 2 1/2 months before the doctor finally decided to do surgery. He has been off of work for the past 2 months recovering from the surgery and no pay. We filed a claim with the state because the employer refused to do it. Today, we received a letter from the employer's insurance company denying the claim because it was not directly work-related. His doctor has now released him back to light duty but his employer claims there is no work for him at this time. My husband's job is in an automotive body shop so it does require a level of physical flexibility. We are looking to re-coop lost wages for the time my husband was out of work and receiving partial pay and any future time off of work due to the injury. We are not greedy and don't care about the medical bills since most were covered under our health insurance.
What rights do we have with this type of claim? Who pays now that the insurance company denied? Does the state pay? Does anyone pay? Do we file a lawsuit against the co-workers and/or the employer?
Our game plan is to move foward in life and pursue other job opportunities for him. Although we will be consulting a lawyer before he quits. He has invested almost 12 years with this employer and all they could say about the injury is "it didn't happen here". The sad thing is, this is the only trade my husband knows and now because of this injury, he has to change careers. Not to mention the debt that is consuming us by the loss of pay.
Anyone's help/advice is appreciated!
