If I’ve been hurt offshore, when should I contact an attorney?
People injured while working offshore should contact a lawyer as soon as possible. The company has people that are trained to minimize the value of the claim. When a worker is injured, the company immediately begins a process of investigation, and minimizing the value of the worker’s claim. Workers need to have an advocate on their side to ensure that they are treated fairly by the company, and to make sure that the worker doesn’t make any missteps that jeopardize the claim. In many cases, the company will send the injured worker to the company doctor. The company doctor has an incentive to minimize the severity of the injury. It is not only common for company doctor’s to minimize the severity of the injury, but it is also common for them to not provide appropriate diagnostic testing. In many cases it appears that the company doctor refuses to order appropriate diagnostic testing in order to avoid findings that may discover the true nature of the injury. Additionally, company doctors rarely, if ever, provide quality care for the worker’s medical problems that they find and admit. In most cases, it is far better for the health and wellbeing of the injured worker to choose their own doctor, and pay for that doctor themselves. Our firm regularly assists clients in finding good doctors and we pay for the medical treatment until the case resolves.
We begin to investigate the cause of accidents immediately. This is because critical evidence must be discovered before the company or circumstances result in destruction of that evidence. We have seen many situations where the company investigation is not necessarily an honest investigation into what happened. Instead, the aim of the company investigation is to try to develop proof that the injured worker was at fault, and any other harmful evidence is destroyed. Because of this situation, we employ investigators who will not only investigate the incident, but will preserve the evidence.
Being represented by a lawyer also prevents the company from tricking unsuspecting injured workers. If you are represented by a lawyer, the company cannot question you about how the accident happened or perform tricky recorded statements that are only meant to be used against you. If your company or the insurance company wants the worker to provide a recorded statement, the worker should refuse and immediately hire a lawyer! If the company merely needed information from the worker, why do they need to record the conversation? The true purpose of recording the conversation is that they plan to use it against you in the future. Do not let that happen to you.