“At J.A. Davis & Associates in McAllen, our personal injury lawyers are dedicated to providing expert legal representation to help you recover after an accident.”

Non-Subscriber Employers

Non-subscribing employers, also known as non-subscribers, are those employers who do not purchase state-sanctioned workers’ compensation insurance. The procedures and process for filing claims and seeking compensation from non-subscribers are fundamentally different than when dealing with subscriber employers, and it can be a very torturous ordeal.

The primary difference between the two types of employers is that an employee who has suffered a workplace injury while employed by a non-subscriber is that he or she can easily file a legal action against their employer for their pain and suffering. The arena for action, so to speak, for these cases usually moves to the courtroom instead of in a workers’ comp administrative bureaucracy. Because these claims are settled in a court of law, this arena tends to favor an injured employee who can retain an aggressive and experienced attorney. Be that as it may, a workmans’ comp lawsuit is almost never an easy battle. An injured employee who works for a non-subscriber has more legal rights, but that doesn’t mean he or she has the experience and understanding to prosecute their own cases. The law involved is too complex for a non-lawyer to comprehend, so it is necessary for an experienced and trial-tested workers’ compensation attorney to take your case and give you a much-increased chance of recovering the full and fair compensation you need to recover from your injuries and for your pain and suffering. More Information here

To start, you have to first file a claim with your employer. If you and your employer do not reach an agreement regarding a plan of action in regard to your claim and compensation, then you must file a lawsuit to seek the compensation you need for your injuries and losses. The problem is that once your case goes to trial, you bear the burden of proof for showing your harms and suffering are due to your employer’s carelessness or negligence in providing a safe work environment. Further, it is your responsibility to “prove” how much monetary compensation you deserve in terms of lost and future lost wages, medical expenses, emotional distress, and pain and suffering.

Texas law allows for a lower threshold to demonstrate the burden of proof and employer liability in non-subscriber claims so as to punish employers for not signing on to Texas workers’ comp. This fact generally works in favor of injured and harmed employees.

Frequent Problems in Nonsubscriber Work Injury Cases

There is only one defense for employers to evade responsibility for a workers’ comp claim and that is the “sole proximate cause” defense. What this defense argues is that the injured or harmed employee is wholly and completely responsible for his or her own pain and suffering due to his or her own carelessness, recklessness and/or negligence. The Texas Workers’ Compensation Act of 1993 had the intent of protecting businesses and give them protection against expensive injured workers’ lawsuits. Texas workmans’ comp law is in part created to punish non-subscribers in order to persuade these employers to buy state-sanctioned insurance in the hope of reducing the amount of work-related injury lawsuits that were clogging up the Texas judicial system’s resources and further protect injured employees while offering more Texas employees coverage. The only defense left to non-subscribers is the sole proximate cause defense.

Since this is the only allowable defense for non-subscriber employers, they use this defense in almost every case. In order for an employer to prove sole proximate cause, they will take whatever underhanded measures they can to show to the judge and jury that you were the cause of your own harms and injuries.

Though non-subscriber employers took the risk to opt-out of workmans’ compensation insurance to save money and assets, you can almost guarantee that they will spend their profits and use their assets to hire aggressive and skilled defense teams to protect their businesses and corporate interests. Their defense teams will devote all of their energies to proving your carelessness in the workplace so they can deny or minimize the compensation that is rightfully yours for your harms and injuries.

Employers and their insurance carriers will attempt to bully you into accepting a minimal and far less than adequate settlement that will not cover your medical expenses and lost wages resulting from your accident. They know how to deceive and influence work accident victims by convincing them that the insurers in fact truly have the victim’s situation and interest at heart and that the proposed settlement is not only fair, but the best one the victim could possibly get. The reality is however, they are only concerned with saving money for the employers and their insurance carriers, with the intent of protecting their own assets at the price of your own well-being.

Texas law admits of only one other option for employers to get out of paying workplace injury claims, and that is to deny the existence of an employer-employee relationship with those injured in the workplace. If the injured worker is in truth not a “real” employee, then the employer in question cannot be expected to pay employer benefits to those who are not on the regular company payroll. Many employers will conceal and complicate the nature of the relationship with certain workers who are not regular employees. For example, many employers contract out work to vendors, builders, truckers, security personnel, etc. and classify these workers as contractors. State law does not compel non-subscriber employees to provide the same safety standards to contract employees. It follows that by denying this as an employer-employee relationship, employers avoid responsibility for the harms and injuries contract workers receive in the workplace.