When healthy workers get injured on the job, they often seek workers’ comp benefits. They know that their injury only exists because of what happened at work, and they need compensation to help cover medical bills and a portion of their lost wages.
What if the worker was already injured? It is true that you typically cannot seek workers’ comp benefits for something that happened at home. But if you had a pre-existing condition and you further aggravated it at work, then you may still qualify for workers’ comp benefits.
A serious back injury
One example of this is if you suffer a mild back injury at home. Maybe you’re moving furniture because you and your spouse just moved to a new house. Your back feels tender and sensitive, but you can still generally work as normal when you’re on the job.
However, you’re then assigned the task of picking up heavy items and carrying them, and you’re not given any assistance from other employees. While doing this, you suffer a severe back strain. The pain is so debilitating that you can barely walk, let alone return to work.
In a case like that, the issues that you experienced on the job clearly made the injury far more severe than it was. Since that is what led to emergency medical care or lost wages – because you had to take time off for your back to recover – you may still deserve workers’ comp benefits. Just because the condition already existed, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to be denied compensation.
It can make it complex, however—especially if your employer believes that the entire injury happened at home and that it wasn’t a work-related event. Be sure you know what legal steps to take at this time.
