The Cintron Firm, LLC Blog

Is Workers’ Compensation Your Only Source of Recovery?

March 3, 2023 by The Cintron Firm

Can You File a Civil Lawsuit after a Workplace Accident?

In New Jersey, as in other states, when you have suffered an injury on the job, you can file a workers’ compensation claim, seeking payment for lost wages, as well as all reasonable and necessary medical expenses arising out of your accident or injury. The benefits available through a work comp claim may not, however, be sufficient to cover all your losses. After all, with a workers’ compensation claim, you won’t get any damages for pain and suffering, loss of companionship or consortium, or loss of enjoyment of life. Workers’ compensation, though, is commonly referred to as your “exclusive remedy” after a workplace accident. Does that mean you cannot recover compensation through any other means? Not necessarily.

Third Party Claims in Work-Related Accidents

The provisions of the New Jersey workers’ compensation laws are intended to provide a means for recovering compensation for the wrongful acts of your employer or a co-worker. When you have suffered injury on the job, in whole or in part, because of the carelessness or negligence of an unrelated third party, you are not required to seek compensation from that third party in a work comp claim. You can bring a personal injury lawsuit against such a party in civil court.

In fact, you can file a workers’ compensation claim and a personal injury lawsuit simultaneously—you cannot, however, recover the same losses in both actions. If your medical expenses were covered by workers’ compensation, you cannot recoup those losses in a personal injury lawsuit.

Contact the Cintron Firm

At the Cintron Firm, LLC, we offer more than 14 years of experience to people in New Jersey facing a broad array of legal challenges. Attorney Mark Cintron has worked as a prosecutor and has extensive courtroom experience, so he’s always ready, willing and able to protect your interests before a judge or jury. Contact our office online or call us at 201-791-1333 or 917-494-5695 to set up an appointment.

The Use of Expert Witness Testimony in a Personal Injury Lawsuit

February 8, 2023 by The Cintron Firm

The Purpose of Expert Witnesses | The Different Kinds of Expert Witnesses

When you have been hurt in an accident caused by the carelessness or negligence of another person, you have a right to file a personal injury lawsuit to recover full and fair compensation for all your losses. As a part of that legal proceeding, you’ll need to prove that the defendant (person from whom you seek damages) caused the accident. You’ll also need to establish the full amount of your current and future losses as a result of your injuries.

The evidence used to prove your claim will typically take the form of eyewitness testimony or physical evidence. You may have statements from others involved in a car accident or from bystanders. You may also have pictures of the damage to your vehicle, your injuries or the road conditions at the time of the crash.

It’s also customary, though, for expert witness testimony to be gathered. This testimony will generally be used to establish:

Liability—Who caused the accident and how they caused it
Damages—The financial impact of the accident, including lost wages, unreimbursed medical expenses, loss of enjoyment of life, loss of companionship or consortium, pain and suffering, and property damages

The Different Types of Expert Witnesses

To establish liability, your attorney will often retain the services of an accident reconstruction specialist, typically an engineer, who can take the physical data of an accident and determine exactly what happened. Such an expert may measure skid marks, look at specific damage to a vehicle or use other physical evidence.

To help a judge and jury calculate all your losses, you’ll typically want the testimony of:

A medical expert, who can identify the specific types of injuries you have suffered, the type of care you’ll need, your prospects for full recovery and any ongoing medical care you’ll need
A financial specialist, who can calculate your actual losses thus far and project the costs you’ll incur in the future. This specialist will commonly determine a present value of your future losses.

Contact the Cintron Firm

At the Cintron Firm, LLC, we offer more than 14 years of experience to people in New Jersey facing a broad array of legal challenges. Attorney Mark Cintron has worked as a prosecutor and has extensive courtroom experience, so he’s always ready, willing and able to protect your interests before a judge or jury. Contact our office online or call us at 201-791-1333 or 917-494-5695 to set up an appointment.

The Types of Damages Available in a Personal Injury Lawsuit

January 11, 2023 by The Cintron Firm

The Losses You Can Potentially Recover after Someone Else’s Negligence

When the careless or wrongful act of another person causes you injury or loss, you have the right to file a civil lawsuit to recover damages. Whether it’s a motor vehicle accident, a slip and fall, a workplace injury or the malfunction of a dangerous or defective product, you can ask a judge and jury to reimburse you for tangible losses and to compensate you for certain intangible injury. Let’s look at the potential damage you can seek in a personal injury claim.

Lost Wages or Income

You have a right to be reimbursed by the at-fault party for any hourly wage, salary or other form of compensation you could not earn because of your injuries. The jury will typically look at your most recent pay records to determine the full amount of your losses. If your injury prevents you from ever working again, you will typically be entitled to reimbursement of wages until normal retirement.

Unreimbursed Medical Expenses

You cannot recover for any medical bills covered by insurance or otherwise paid, but you can pursue reimbursement of past medical expenses, as well as compensation for anticipated future medical bills.

Pain and Suffering

This includes physical and emotional distress. Because of the difficulty of measuring these damages, many courts simply using a multiplier, taking the amount of tangible losses and multiplying by that factor (Usually between 1 and 10).

Loss of Enjoyment of Life

This compensates you for loss of the ability to engage in activities that were common before your accident. It also allows you to recover damages for your inability to engage in simple acts of daily life, such as dressing yourself, walking or grooming.

Loss of Companionship or Consortium

If your accident has made it difficult or impossible to have close and/or intimate relationships with others, you have a right to compensation for that loss.

Property Damage

You have a right to be reimbursed for the reduction in value of any property or asset as a result of the accident, including the full value of any property destroyed or rendered worthless by the accident.

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Wishing You And Yours A Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

December 24, 2022 by The Cintron Firm

Third-Party Claims in Work-Related Accidents

December 14, 2022 by The Cintron Firm

Are You Limited to Workers’ Compensation Benefits?

>According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than seven million work-related injuries are reported every year. In New Jersey, all employers not covered by federal programs must either carry workers’ compensation insurance or be approved to be self-insured. When you suffer any type of injury on the job, then, one of your first actions will be to notify your employer and initiate the process of filing a work comp claim. Is that your only recourse when you’ve been hurt on the job? Can you ever bring a personal injury lawsuit against another party?

How Workers’ Compensation Works

The New Jersey workers compensation laws were enacted with the intent of providing benefit to all parties involved in a workplace accident claim:

If a work comp claim is approved, the injured worker will typically have access to benefits within a few weeks (unlike a civil lawsuit, where it may be years before any damages are actually paid). In addition, because workers’ compensation is essentially a “no-fault” system, an injured worker does not need to prove negligence. All that is required to qualify for workers’ compensation benefits is proof that you have been hurt and that your injury was work-related.
The employer benefits because workers’ compensation pays a fixed amount, based on the employee’s income. There’s no risk that a sympathetic jury will award millions.

The workers’ compensation laws are intended, however, to cover only situations where the employer or a co-worker caused the accident. If a worker’s injuries are caused to any extent by the wrongful actions of an unrelated third party, the injured worker may still file a civil lawsuit to seek damages from that party. In fact, an injured worker may file a civil lawsuit and a workers’ compensation claim simultaneously. The worker may not, however, recover damages for the same losses in both proceedings.

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Happy Thanksgiving

November 23, 2022 by The Cintron Firm

What Can You Recover in a Personal Injury Lawsuit?

November 15, 2022 by The Cintron Firm

What Types of Compensation Are Available?

You’ve been hurt in an accident caused by someone else’s wrongful act. You have a right to file a lawsuit to recover compensation for all your losses. What does that include? What compensation can you expect to recover?

The Types of Damages Available in a Personal Injury Lawsuit

At the highest level, personal injury damages typically take the form of either compensatory damages or punitive damages. As a practical matter, punitive damages are extremely rare, granted only when a defendant’s actions are egregious or with reckless disregard for the value of human life.

Compensatory damages generally fall into two categories:

Economic damages—These losses are generally tangible and easy to determine, and include:

Loss of income or wages, as evidenced by prior earnings
Any unpaid or unreimbursed medical expenses
Any property damage or loss not covered by insurance

Non-economic damages—These types of losses are less tangible and, therefore, more difficult to calculate. Common forms of non-economic damages that are typically awarded in personal injury cases include:

Pain and suffering—Juries may award damages for physical and/or mental pain and suffering. A common approach is to determine the amount of economic damages and use a multiplier. For example, the jury may calculate $500,000 in economic damages and use a multiplier of two to assess $1,000,000 in damages for pain and suffering.
Loss of companionship or consortium—These damages cover the loss of close or intimate relationships with family members due to an injury, including loss of guidance, affection and nurturing
Loss of enjoyment of life—This covers the loss of the ability to engage in the ordinary acts of daily life, as well as any activities that brought joy, satisfaction or contentment before the accident

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Happy Halloween!

October 31, 2022 by The Cintron Firm

Who Qualifies to File a Personal Injury Claim after an Accident?

October 13, 2022 by The Cintron Firm

What Are the Legal Requirements to Be Eligible to File a Lawsuit?

The impact of a personal injury can be widespread. You may be the primary or exclusive breadwinner in your family and be unable to work because of your injuries. You may be the spouse or child of an injured person, and lose the ability to have a close or intimate relationship, because of the injuries. You may be a friend or business associate and experience loss of companionship or contribution to the business.

After an accident, qualified persons can file a personal injury claim to recover for certain losses. But what are the criteria that make you eligible to file a personal injury lawsuit to recover damages?

Standing to Sue

The general legal principle that governs eligibility to recover compensation in a lawsuit is knows as “standing to sue.” A person may only be a plaintiff in personal injury litigation if he or she has standing. What does that mean?

Standing is unrelated to the facts of a case, the cause of an accident or the disputed issues, except as they relate to the relationship between the injured person and the person seeking to recover damages (financial compensation after a loss). Standing simply means that you have a right to sue. To establish standing, you must show three things:

That you suffered an actual injury—You cannot file a lawsuit for damages for what “might have happened.” You cannot bring a lawsuit for injuries suffered by another person, unless those injuries caused you to suffer injury or loss. Furthermore, you cannot bring a personal injury lawsuit for injuries that may arise in the future.
You must show that the defendant (party from whom you seek damages) caused the accident and injury
You must show that the court will be able to do something to either undo the harm done to you or to compensate you for the harm you have suffered

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Evidence that Can Be Excluded at a Personal Injury Trial

September 15, 2022 by The Cintron Firm

Evidence that Can Be Ruled Inadmissible

In New Jersey and across the United States, when parties are preparing a personal injury case, the principle of open discovery applies, ensuring that all parties have equal access to information and evidence related to the lawsuit. It’s important to understand, though, that not all evidence uncovered by the parties may be admissible at trial, as it may be unreliable or may have little relationship to the material issues involved. In fact, it’s customary for the court to hold hearings in advance of trial to determine the admissibility of some types of evidence, so that the jury may not be unfairly prejudiced by hearing inadmissible evidence during the course of the trial.

What Types of Evidence Can the Court Exclude from a Trial?

The admissibility of evidence is governed by the relevant rules of evidence—the Federal Rules of Evidence apply in personal injury claims in federal courts and state evidentiary rules govern all state court proceedings. Though the rules may be slightly different from state to state, there are some general limitations:

Evidence may be excluded if it is deemed irrelevant—The evidence must have some bearing on the issues that need to be resolved. For example, an injured party typically cannot introduce evidence of a defendant’s poor credit rating, if that has nothing to do with the cause of the accident or the damages suffered.
Evidence may be excluded if it provides opinion, rather than fact—A qualified expert witness may give an opinion in court, but all other witnesses must limit their testimony to the facts
Evidence may be excluded if it is considered to be hearsay—A witness may not testify as to what another person said outside of court, if the testimony is introduced to prove the truth of the out-of-court statement. For example, a witness may not testify that he heard a third party say that he knew that there was ice on his sidewalk, if introduced to prove that there was ice on the sidewalk.