Serious and Willful Misconduct

serious and willful misconduct attorney long beach

Some work accidents are caused by the serious and willful misconduct of the employer.  If your employer intentionally or recklessly caused your work accident, our California workers comp lawyer will file a petition.

The definition of “serious and willful misconduct” has typically been understood to mean that an employer “must know of the dangerous condition, know that the probable consequence of its continuance will involve serious injury to an employee, and deliberately fail to take corrective action.

Increase in workers compensation

If our workers compensation lawyer successfully proves that your employer’s serious and willful misconduct caused your work injury, then you will be entitled to a penalty of 50% of the total benefits paid by your employer in regards to your work injury.

Obviously, accidents can occur in any workplace. However, this standard can be met when it’s proven that the employer knew that there was a condition that was dangerous, knew it could lead to an injury, and then did nothing to address it.
An example might be if there was a staircase at your place of work that was in bad shape. Maybe there were holes in the stairs and/or the railing was falling apart. If you injure yourself through the course of doing your job here, and the business owner knew about the poor condition of the stairs, then you would have a very strong case.

If you have any questions as to whether or not you were victimized by serious and willful misconduct on the job, our California workers compensation lawyer can help. One example is if your employer deliberately injured you. Should they have done so, it’s not just negligent, it’s something else, and has to be dealt with accordingly.

One example of serious and willful misconduct that we see all too often is that an employer violates a safety order. Perhaps the violation led to an injury or worse. Maybe the employer knew that conditions and circumstances were in violation of the order and yet did nothing. It could also be that you were victimized by your employer’s “passive negligence.” They might have known that the probable result of an action could lead to your injury, yet disregarded the possibilities.

Process of filing the petition

In order to file a petition, you will need to file an application for adjudication with the workers compensation appeals board.

Should you have any questions about this or any other part of the process, we’ll be glad to help.

Timetable for filing the petition

The petition must be filed within one year of your work injury. Sometimes, people are hesitant to bring these cases forward because they don’t believe that they have a case. The truth is that you have nothing to lose. If you work in an unsafe environment and that leads to your injury, you deserve to receive compensation for it. They had a responsibility to you and everyone else that works there, the responsibility of making a safe work environment. Sure, accidents are a part of work, but when someone in power shirks their responsibilities in a way that leads to an accident, something must be done.

We offer free consultations. While we understand that these kinds of cases might be difficult, it’s important to keep in mind that there’s no downside in reaching out to us. The worst thing that can happen is we’ll point out that you might not have a case for serious and willful misconduct. Balanced against the potential that you could receive more compensation for everything that you have to go through, it’s absolutely worth it to reach out to us. Besides, even if your case does not reach the level to be able to prove serious and willful misconduct, you may probably still qualify for workers compensation.

Call our California workmans compensation lawyer for a free consultation