How Do You Prove a Work Injury Was Caused by Unsafe Equipment?

Workers’ compensation doesn’t work like a lawsuit. Nobody asks who was at fault. That’s the whole bargain. You give up the right to sue your employer, and in exchange, nobody can argue about blame.

So, if the machine at work failed, why bother proving it?

There are two reasons. One, insurers dispute whether an injury actually happened at work more often than people think. Two, the claim that “he hurt his back somewhere” is easier to deny than “the hand guard was missing from the press.”

Also, if the work equipment itself was defective, that opens up a potential second claim against someone beyond your employer, an entity that will pay for losses that a standard workers’ compensation claim won’t.

No-Fault Doesn’t Mean No Proof

You don’t have to prove your employer was careless in a workers’ comp claim, but you do have to prove the injury occurred in the course of your employment.

If you can’t prove that, your claim will fail. A workers’ comp claim denial won’t say the accident was your fault, since blame is not an issue. It will instead assert that your injury is preexisting, degenerative, or something that happened away from work.

A specific mechanical cause for your injury trumps that.

A hydraulic line that let go at 9:45 a.m. in front of two workers is a documented fact with witnesses and a timestamp. A sore back is just a story. Fault in a workers’ compensation claim stops being irrelevant the moment a third party becomes potentially liable.

The Evidence That Settles It

Proving that unsafe equipment caused a work injury means collecting the right evidence in the first few days. Once the equipment gets repaired, cleaned, or hauled off, it’s probably too late.

Here’s information to gather immediately after a workplace injury due to unsafe equipment.

• Photographs and videos of the machine in place: Capture the missing guard, the failed part, or the bypassed switch before it gets fixed or moved out of view. Use wide shots of the work area to show where you were standing.
• Equipment maintenance records: Find out what the company or supplier knew about the unsafe equipment. Get hold of service logs, work orders, repair orders, and inspection sheets. A machine with multiple prior work orders for the same problem tells a more meaningful story than one that broke without warning.
• Prior complaints: Who else knew this equipment was faulty? Look for an incident report somebody filed, an email sent to a supervisor, or a handwritten sign taped to the panel warning others before use.
• The machine itself: Ask in writing that the machine be preserved as it is, not repaired or scrapped before your side can investigate.
• Coworker accounts: Get written statements from other employees who watched the accident happen and those who have been using the unsafe equipment for months.
• An expert opinion: Bring in a safety or mechanical engineer who can explain what failed and why.

That last one, the expert’s opinion, is really important. That’s what moves defective workplace machinery claims from an argument to an informed finding.

What OSHA Already Required Them to Do

Federal safety standards can be helpful here because they exist independently of your claim. These standards were put in place long before you got hurt.

Machine guarding is the most obvious one. The standard at 29 CFR 1910.212 requires guarding that protects operators from point-of-operation hazards, such as nip points, blades, rotating parts, and flying chips or sparks. The standard names of the equipment most often involved in workplace injuries include the following:

• Power presses
• Shears
• Milling machines
• Power saws
• Jointers
• Portable power tools

Control of hazardous energy, better known on worksites as lockout/tagout, is covered under 1910.147 and lands among the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) ten most-cited standards year after year.

There’s also reporting duty. Under 29 CFR 1904.39, an employer has 24 hours to report workplace incidents involving amputation, in-patient hospitalization, or the loss of an eye. An employer has eight hours to report a fatality. Even a fingertip amputation, with or without bone loss, must be reported to OSHA within 24 hours.

If a machine took off part of your hand, your employer owed OSHA a phone call by the next day. Your employer can’t lie. Whether that call happened is a verifiable fact.

You can also access an employer’s inspection and citation history through OSHA’s public establishment search. A prior citation won’t automatically prove that your injury was caused by a violation. Nevertheless, it’s still a government finding that the condition was unsafe. Insurers have a difficult time shrugging that off.

The Claim Your Employer Isn’t Part Of

If you need more compensation to cover your damages, this is where you can get it.

Workers’ comp pays for medical treatment and covers a portion of your lost wages.

It doesn’t pay for pain and suffering nor compensate you for losing a part of the life you had before. The only route to these damages runs through third-party liability for defective products. That route could run against the manufacturer, the distributor, the company that leased the equipment, or an outside contractor who serviced the equipment poorly.

Product liability in the workplace focuses on the machine rather than your employer’s conduct. Did the machine come with a defect? Was it built wrong? Was it sold without adequate warnings or without a guard it should have shipped with in the first place?

One caution, however: If you recover from a third party, your workers’ comp carrier will take a portion of that money as reimbursement for benefits it’s already paid.

That doesn’t make a third-party claim less worthwhile, but it’s something you should know up front.

The First 48 Hours

It’s hard to investigate a workplace accident while you’re sitting in an emergency room. So, get treated first. Next, tell your workers’ comp provider exactly what happened at your job.

Be specific: tell them which machine, which part, and what it did to you.

Report the injury in writing to your employer. Name the equipment specifically. Just saying “I got hurt at work” isn’t as compelling a record as “left index finger got caught in the unguarded in-feed roller.”

If possible, get photos of all the involved equipment and the work area before the shift ends. Write down which coworkers saw it. Ask in writing that the machine be preserved rather than fixed or scrapped.

Keep your own copies of all evidence gathered. Everything you hand over goes into somebody else’s file.

Getting a Machinery Malfunction Injury on the Record

An equipment failure that causes workplace injuries is sure to leave physical evidence behind. However, this evidence won’t be available for long. After all, the fastest way to make a broken machine safe and productive again is to fix it.

Work Injury Advisor helps workers understand what a claim involves before any decision gets made on their behalf. Proving what a machine did doesn’t come down to a smooth argument, but to retrieving the records, obtaining the photographs, and examining the failed part while it still exists.

If you’ve been injured on the job by unsafe equipment, consider speaking with a workers’ compensation attorney about two claims: One against the insurer and one against whoever built or serviced that machine.

The damage done to you might never fully heal. But you can bet someone will fix that machine by Friday.