What Workplace Injuries are Covered in Texas?

Not every injury is covered under Texas’ workers’ payment laws. In order to be covered, the injury or health problem must first be “sustained in the course and scope of employment.”

What does this mean, precisely?

Put simply, the injury should have been sustained while you were doing work for your company.

For example, a bricklayer who tosses out their back while raising bricks for an appointed job has sustained an injury “in the course and scope of work.”

On the other hand, a staff member who, during their lunch break, drives to the shop for cigarettes and is involved in an accident has actually not sustained an injury “in the course and scope of employment.”

Injuries aren’t covered by employees’ settlement in Texas if they’re the outcome of the employee’s horseplay, willful criminal acts, self-injury, intoxication from drugs or alcohol, or “acts of God” (such as being struck by lightning).

Once it’s particular the injury was sustained in the course and scope of employment, the question becomes whether the particular injury is covered under the policy.

The Texas Employees’ Compensation Act specifies “injury” as “damage or harm to the physical structure of the body and an illness or infection naturally arising from the damage or harm.” Therefore, under the law, a lot of physical injuries would be covered (backaches, damaged bones, burns, and so on).

It is, nevertheless, less clear whether a psychological injury would be covered.

Are emotional injuries covered by employees’ settlement?

In State Personnel Workers’ Payment Division v. Thomas Camarata, the Texas Court of Appeals recognized that a worker can recuperate for an injury due to psychological trauma when there’s evidence that the mental injury can be traced to a “specific event.”

For instance, terrible neurosis suffered by an employee on a scaffold after seeing a fellow worker fall to his death was compensable.

On the other hand, evidence that a truck driver’s task was normally demanding wasn’t sufficient adequate to show a compensable injury from a heart attack.

Workers’ compensation benefits readily available in Texas

Texas employees’ payment pays the following benefits:

Earnings advantages (in some cases called “wage loss benefits”) amount to a specific portion of the typical weekly wages lost as a result of a temporary or irreversible impairment.

Medical advantages pay for sensible and needed healthcare to treat your job-related injury or disease.

Professional rehabilitation advantages assist the hurt staff member discover alternative employment (if the worker can’t return to their previous job).

Death benefits equal to 75% of staff member’s typical weekly wage can be paid to legal beneficiaries, together with as much as $10,000 in burial expenditures, if the employee dies from a work-related injury or health problem.
There are several different aspects to this type of law, as a work injury lawyer in El Paso, TX like the ones at the law offices of Davie & Valdez, P.C., can explain.