Have you been injured?
Hire the big guns. Call the Bull Attorneys!
Workers’ Compensation workplace accidents in Wichita and across Kansas cause thousands of injuries and deaths annually. These on-the-job injuries treat workers unfairly and force them to go to doctors that the insurance companies choose. Bull Attorneys experienced Wichita workplace accident Injury lawyers help injured workers get medical treatment, money for wage losses and for permanent functional impairment and disability.
The Kansas Workers’ Compensation Act exists to protect injured workers in Wichita and across all of Kansas. This law requires most employers to have insurance that provides benefits for workers who get hurt on the job. These benefits can help pay for things like lost wages and medical treatments.
The Kansas Workers’ Compensation Act was first created in 1911 and was designed to protect the legal interests of both the employer and employees who were hurt. Injured workers in Wichita and Kansas need to understand this law was not designed for their benefit. It was to limit civil lawsuits (known as third party claims) against employers for negligent acts that cause injury and death to their employees and is thus, not a fair law to injured workers. The Kansas Division of Workers Compensation 2022 Annual Statistical Report reports that in 2022 Kansas had 48,416 total injuries and occupational illnesses while 54 of them resulted in 54 fatalities.
In fact, there are so many jobsite accidents causing injuries in Kansas that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in 2021 Kansas had 24,700 nonfatal work injuries and illnesses. At least 14,800 of them were of a severe injury type. The Kansas Department of Labor Division of Workers Compensation reported a higher number of 44,506 total occupational injuries and illnesses for 2021. This included 43 workplace accidents or illnesses resulting in wrongful death to the workers.
Kansas workplace injuries fall under The Kansas Workers’ Compensation Act. This law is an insurance policy that is required to be provided by the employer. It covers all employers in Wichita and the State of Kansas with an annual payroll of $20,000 or more. It does not apply to farmers and agricultural pursuits. It covers:
With workers’ compensation injuries on the rise from 2021 to 2022 it means that employers in Kansas are not doing anything to reduce the incidence rate of injuries and deaths from workplace injuries. Now, more than ever, you need experienced Wichita workers’ compensation injury attorneys that know how to separate a workers’ compensation claim from a civil liability third party liability claim.
Bull Attorneys are experienced workers comp lawyers. have practiced workers’ compensation law in Kansas since 1983. We have handled over 10,000 workers’ compensation cases and personal injury cases involving car, truck and motorcycle accidents, premises liability, construction site accident injuries and several other areas of personal injury law. Our law team gets great results.
Wichita is home to many large factories where workers are injured badly. Manufacturing is very common with aircraft manufacturing like Spirit, Textron who produces Cessna and Beechcraft planes and jets and Bombardier. In addition to the large manufacturers there are hundreds of smaller factories that build parties for the airplane producers.
In addition to primary aircraft manufacturers Kansas is home to over 450 supply chain employers supplying parts for aircraft manufacturers. With so many factories it is clear that many workers in aerospace will be injured on an annual basis.
Given that the Wichita Metro area population is near 647,000 people, it is clear many people are employed by manufacturing companies. These companies and other business workplaces in Wichita and across Kansas must have trained laborers to build products. These factories have their employees working full-time and many workers end up too injured to return to work.
When an injured worker at one of these plants is injured, they may only be sent to the onsite company doctor or nurse. If they are hurt more badly their employer’s insurance carrier may send them to an occupational doctor next. Our Wichita work comp lawyers know all of the doctors in Wichita and know that most occupational doctors are there to protect the factory who sends them the work.
The National Institute of Health published a study about workers’ compensation types of injuries which informs us that four types of injuries make up the majority of all workers’ compensation injuries.
No matter what the injuries are, you can get medical treatment to help you recover and wage loss payments to help you live while you recover.
The Kansas Workers’ Compensation Act generally allows an injured worker to get 100% of their authorized medical expenses. It provides weekly pay benefits while unable to work full time. It pays for permanent medical or work disability. For workers who die at work, wrongful death additional benefits are available to the dependent family members of the deceased worker.
Authorized medical means that your employer or their insurance company have authorized you to go to a certain health care provider, doctor or hospital. This is where the problem with Kansas workers’ compensation starts. If the employer sends you to their company doctor or to an occupational medicine clinic you will likely have to fight to get a real compassionate doctor. That is why you need a Kansas workers’ compensation injury lawyer to help you get the best medical treatment.
If the employer or their insurance carrier says the doctor or hospital you choose is not authorized, Kansas law only allows $500 for payment for unauthorized medical care. This is why you have to request a new better doctor through a preliminary hearing where the Judge decides if you get the higher skilled doctor or stay with the company doctor.
If unable to work, Kansas workers’ compensation law provides that you receive pay for missed work when you are off full time. However, there is a catch here to. They only pay for 2/3 of your maximum weekly wage which is capped out so if you make more than the authorized maximum cap you will lose out substantially on financial compensation.
The system looks at the average of your past 26 weeks of pay and then averages it out. If you have overtime pay that will also be averaged out. The Kansas Department of Labor sets a new maximum statewide average weekly wage and weekly benefit every July. For any workers compensation accident with an injury after July 1, 2023, the weekly benefit is $804.00 based upon an average weekly wage of $1,072.66. It is important to understand that if you are a high paid worker you will get a maximum benefit of $804.00 no matter how high above the average weekly wage your pay is.
When you have permanent functional impairment, a doctor can calculate the percentage of permanent functional loss that you have to the body part. For example, an injury to the lower leg is 190 weeks while an injury to the whole leg is worth a total of 200 weeks. If you have a 20% functional loss to the leg, then you can collect 40 weeks less the number of weeks paid to you while you were temporarily disabled.
A whole-body case like a back, neck or head injury will be worth up to 415 weeks of compensation. With a whole-body case you will have the doctor evaluate both the percentage of functional loss to the body and if you are over a certain percentage then your doctor can provide an opinion about your work disability which can result in a much higher monetary award than with only a functional loss.
For wrongful death claim the cases become much more difficult especially when a worker dies and does not leave a dependent wife or children behind. The Kansas Department of Labor and state legislature set a state maximum of only $300,000. Of this amount, $60,000 is a lump sum that is supposed to be automatically paid after a worker dies.
Many insurance carriers refuse to make that payment until you hire a Wichita workers’ compensation wrongful death attorney. Additionally, the law allows all medical and hospital bills be paid and the family can receive up to $10,000 for funeral expenses.
If a spouse is unable to get a complete up front lump sum payment of all benefits including future benefits, they will have to receive payments over time. If the spouse remarries or dies, then the workers’ compensation benefits stop. For children who are not dependent upon the deceased worker they will only receive benefits while in school.
Notify Supervisor of Injury. If an injured worker fails to give notice of their injury to a supervisor, it creates a large defense to your employer, and you may lose.
File a written claim with employer. You should ask your employer in human resources for a form to make your claim and remember to list how the injury happened and identify every single body part injured.
Ask permission from supervisor to go to the emergency room. Because your employer and their insurance carrier can control your medical treatment and limit your ability to get good medical care it is essential to ask the supervisor immediately if you can go to the emergency room. Do not go to a minor emergency or urgent care facility. Only go to the emergency room at a normal large hospital like Via Christi St. Francis or Wesley.
Report all injuries no matter how small. If you only have a part of your body injured but other parts are hurting report all of them so that your case becomes a whole-body injury case.
Photograph the area at the jobsite where you were injured. As they say, one picture says a thousand words so make sure you take good, clear photographs of all injuries and the accident site.
Photograph all stages of your injury healing process. This helps show the Administrative Law Judge evidence of how bad your recovery was.
The Kansas Workers’ Compensation Act is written to help the injured worker and their Kansas workers’ compensation lawyer to understand certain definitions. The definitions are found at K.S.A. 44-508.
There are other legal terms that define how an injured worker receives medical benefits and wage payments. Suffice it to say that the law is complicated enough that most injured workers are better off hiring a Wichita work comp lawyer rather than trying to understand the law which is intentionally written to help employers and insurance carriers avoid paying a fair amount to their injured employees.
A third-party claim is where a civil legal claim for injuries and losses arises from an on-the-job injury with an employed worker who was injured by someone other than his/her employer or a co-worker and they were negligent.
Third-party injury claims can allow an employee injured on the job to get a second legal claim for personal injuries against the other person or business that caused his/her injuries while working.
These third-party claims can change a normal small value workers’ compensation case and make it into a much larger personal injury claim where you can sue for pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life, medical bills, wage loss, disability and disfigurement or wrongful death when the injured person dies.
These cases are difficult for many routine comp lawyers to understand. Many work comp attorneys never set foot in civil court and only do administrative hearings before a judge where no jury is there to award money. This is because a personal injury civil suit is much more difficult and takes experienced trial lawyers to prove the third-party claim.
The Wichita workers’ compensation attorney must get around what is called the exclusive remedy doctrine that prevents an injured worker from getting more money than allowed under the Kansas Workers’ Compensation Act. These difficult cases require the personal injury lawyer to usually file a lawsuit against the negligent party and then prove that the other person or business sued was not their employer. When this happens, your on-the-job injury gets much bigger resulting in higher financial compensation.
You are working on a construction site with multiple different contractors building a grain bin or other large structure and some person from the other company causes you to become injured due to their negligence.
You work at heights above the ground and the harness was poorly built and allows you to fall to the ground which gives you a product liability claim against the manufacturer of the defective product.
While a normal workers’ compensation claim can get wage loss benefits and pay for medical bills and permanent disfigurement, a third-party claim will go after the business that hired the negligent worker who injured you. These cases usually have high insurance limits of one million dollars or more. Most of these third-party defendants have significant business liability insurance coverage.
Many of the million-dollar plus settlements that Bull Attorneys has achieved over the years are from third-party claims that were directly tied to a workers’ compensation injury case.
Certain laws in the U.S. were made to protect workers from injuries on a job site. The main laws and regulations come from the Occupational Health & Safety Administration (OSHA). Congress created OSHA to protect workers from being injured in the workplace by ensuring safe working conditions for workers in Kansas and the entire nation by creating a set of standards of care to follow and by enforcing violation of these safety standards.
OSHA has standards to protect four areas of commerce which are General Industry, Construction, Maritime, and Agriculture. These standards include regulatory requirements for all employers to follow to prevent injuries and deaths to workers.
OSHA and the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that as of 2021 there were 5,190 fatalities nationwide from jobsite injuries which establishes that 14 workers per day on average are killed due to jobsite and workplace injuries. Unfortunately for family members of farm workers, they are not covered by OSHA protection laws.
At Bull Attorneys, we believe every worker has the right to a safe workplace. Our Wichita workers’ compensation attorneys are highly experienced in regulatory interpretation of safety laws so that we can usually take a common work comp injury on a construction site and turn it into a much larger third-party personal injury lawsuit.
Workers’ Compensation is a form of insurance providing an injured or sick worker who was injured or harmed at work with money benefits to pay for wage loss, medical care and functional loss of a body part.
In Kansas, a Workers’ Compensation claim can provide benefits like wage loss coverage, temporary or permanent disability wages, compensation for a worker’s death paid to their dependents, medical benefits for treatment and future medical needs, and compensation for prosthetic limbs or scar revision surgeries.
Workers’ Compensation covers a broad range of injuries, from spinal injuries, machinery accidents, delivery driver injuries to construction site fatalities. It also covers other specific conditions like repetitive use injuries, paralysis injuries, and even occupational illnesses where your body develops a disease from exposure to a toxic substance at work.
Yes, Workers’ Compensation is a no-fault system. This means that even if you caused your workplace accident, you could still be eligible for benefits.
You should hire a workers’ compensation lawyer when you have more than a minor temporary injury. The faster you hire a Kansas workers’ compensation lawyer, the better your chances are to get a great doctor to heal you more rapidly. Kansas allows your employer or their insurance company to choose your doctor. They pick bad doctors who are more loyal to the insurance company than the patient.
Most Workers’ Compensation lawyers work on a contingency fee basis. This means they only get paid if they win the case. The fee is a percentage of the benefits you receive.
If you’re injured on the job, report the incident to your supervisor immediately, seek medical attention, document your injuries and the accident details, call Bull Attorneys® to help you file a Workers’ Compensation claim as soon as possible.
No, it’s against the law for an employer to retaliate against a worker for filing a Workers’ Compensation claim. If you believe you have been fired because you filed a claim, you should consult with an attorney. Your employer may look for other reasons to fire you so it is highly important that you speak to a highly experienced workers’ compensation lawyer.
Many of these cases permit additional third-party claims against someone other than your employer. You can get a higher amount of compensation than for your Workers Compensation claim, when there is an additional company or person at fault for your injury.
10111 E. 21st St. N #204
Wichita KS 67206
410 W 21st St
Wichita KS 67203
2570 S Broadway #100
Wichita KS 67216
3102 E Kansas Ave #100
Garden City KS 67846