If you’ve been injured on the job, you’re entitled to workers’ compensation benefits. Your workers’ comp checks cover the doctor and part of your paycheck.
However, nothing in your workers’ comp benefits accounts for the pain, the things you can no longer do, or the strain your family absorbed. When someone outside your company caused the accident, a second claim covers those losses, and it runs alongside your comp claim instead of replacing it.
That second claim is a personal injury claim, and it’s why our personal injury workers’ compensation attorneys in Minneapolis look at every workplace accident twice.
Learn more about when a workplace accident can become a potential personal injury case, and what you should do if you want to pursue both.
Your Case Turns into a Personal Injury Claim When an Outsider Caused It
When deciding whether you have a personal injury claim alongside a workers’ compensation one, it comes down to who caused the accident in the first place. By “the causing party,” we mean the third party.
A third party is anyone whose carelessness helped cause your injury and who does not work for your employer. Four situations come up most often.
- Negligent drivers: A crash during a delivery route or service call puts the other driver on the hook.
- Equipment makers: A ladder that buckles or a saw missing its guard points back to the manufacturer.
- Property owners: Getting hurt at a customer’s building can make that owner answerable.
- Other contractors: On shared job sites, the hazard often belongs to a different trade’s crew.
Coworkers sit outside that list. Minnesota shields a fellow employee from liability unless the injury came from gross negligence or was inflicted on purpose.
Your employer also stays off that list. In fact, that’s what workers’ compensation liability insurance is for. The coverage ensures you receive benefits following an accident without anyone proving that your employer is to blame.
In the case of a personal injury case, your claim points outward — in particular, toward the companies and drivers your employer does not control.
How the Money Splits When Both Claims Pay
Most injured workers assume the comp insurer will swallow every dollar of a third-party recovery, so they never file one. Minnesota law divides that money differently, and the formula sits in the statute rather than in whatever an adjuster tells you over the phone.
Your Insurer Has a Right to Repayment
Accepting comp benefits gives your employer or its insurer subrogation rights. They step into your shoes and can recover what they already spent on your medical care and wage benefits out of the third-party money.
Repayment sounds like it drains the case. Read further into the statute and the picture changes.
One Third Is Yours No Matter What
Costs of collection come off the top first. Of the remainder, one third goes straight to you, untouched by any subrogation right, before the insurer sees a dollar. That share survives even when the carrier paid out more than the negligence case is worth.
Before advising anyone to accept or refuse an offer, our personal injury workers’ compensation attorneys in Saint Paul run the split both ways. Sometimes a modest settlement leaves more in your pocket than a larger one, depending on how much the carrier has already paid.
Our Saint Paul injury attorneys do that arithmetic before a signature goes anywhere near the paperwork.
Settling Quietly Can Void the Deal
Your employer has to learn of your intent to settle within a reasonable time. Settle after benefits have been paid without giving that notice, and the agreement becomes void against the insurer’s subrogation rights, which can unwind everything you negotiated.
Two Claims, Two Different Clocks
Deadlines here run on separate tracks, and the one people miss is usually the one they assumed was furthest away.
A comp claim must be brought within three years of the written injury report reaching the Department of Labor and Industry, and no later than six years from the accident itself. Negligence claims get six years, though a defective product case argued on strict liability shrinks to four.
Comp disputes take years to resolve, and the negligence clock keeps running the whole time. Waiting for one outcome before calling personal injury workers compensation attorneys in Saint Paul can quietly close the door on the larger claim.
What To Do in the First Few Weeks
Evidence for a negligence claim disappears faster than evidence for a comp claim, and nobody preserves it on your behalf.
- Report the injury in writing: A written report starts your comp clock running.
- Photograph the scene: Spills get mopped, guards get replaced, and job sites change by the next shift.
- Keep the equipment: A product claim needs the actual ladder, tool, or part that failed.
- Write down witness names: Crews rotate off sites, and contractors finish their scope and leave.
Fault also gets divided in Minnesota, so whatever share of blame lands on you reduces your recovery by that percentage. Photos and witness names pin down how the accident happened, which protects that number when the other side starts assigning responsibility.
Get Both Claims Reviewed Before You Settle Either One
A comp claim and a negligence claim answer different questions, pay for different losses, and expire on different schedules. Filed together, the second claim reaches everything comp was never built to cover, and the one-third rule keeps a guaranteed piece of that recovery in your hands.
Our personal injury workers compensation attorneys in Minneapolis review both sides of a workplace accident at the first meeting, whether your case starts as a Minneapolis comp claim or as a negligence case against an outside company. Every consultation with our Minneapolis injury lawyers costs you nothing.
Have you been injured at work through no fault of your own?
Contact our law firm for a free case review today and start your comeback journey.