Video Transcript
I’m Attorney David Hood, and we’re continuing with part 2, with my able assistant Tracey, on questions, problems and solutions you may have for your workers’ compensation case in South Carolina. I think there are a couple more things we wanted to alert people who get injured on the job in South Carolina to, Tracey.
How do I go about starting a workers’ comp. claim?
There’s a right way and a wrong way. Let’s just talk about the right way.
You need to report the claim to your employer. Then they should contact the workers’ comp insurance company. We are in a ‘right to work’ state, so sometimes if it’s a minor injury, you might not want to do that, because you can be fired for any reason, you can quit for any reason. There’s a little bit of protection under the South Carolina Workers’ Compensation Act, but it’s not much. So, sometimes we urge people to be careful, particularly if they’re a long-time employee with a good job they want to hang on to. But, if your employer ignores you, you want to be sure (within 90 days, because after 90 days that’s it, you’re done) you want to make sure that claim gets filed with the South Carolina Workers’ Compensation Commission in Columbia by filing a form 50. They can help you with that at the judicial department at the South Carolina Workers’ Compensation Commission or your attorney (for instance, if we represented you, we would do that for you) to perfect your claim.
What if I haven’t heard back from the insurance company?
What if you’ve had a workers’ comp claim and you’re back to work and you haven’t heard anything from the insurance company?
What happens is, after a two-year period, your case is done. If you’ve had a serious on-the-job injury, you should be compensated at the end. There’s no pain and suffering under workers’ comp, but you’re supposed to get compensated for the loss of use of your body part(s). So, if you have a leg injury, a back injury, a shoulder injury, a head injury, you should be compensated for those at the end. But if you don’t have representation, the insurance company’s not going to tell you about that. If they can let the statute expire after a couple of years, they don’t have to pay you.
So, make sure you get something at the end. If we can help you, we’d be glad to. There’s no charge for an initial consultation. You can contact us by email or call us and we’d be happy to answer your questions.
