Husband Dies My husband died in a motor accident on June 30,2006 he is a contractor and was out of town looking at prospective work, had st...

Question

Husband Dies

My husband died in a motor accident on June 30,2006 he is a contractor and was out of town looking at prospective work, had stopped to have dinner and had a couple of beers unfortunately he was in an accident and died. Workers comp is using the alcohol issue as their defense to deny my claim stating that he was in fact on the job and we have verification of that they even said he was working but because of the alcohol they have denied my claim again. He paid into workers comp and his employer went to the hearing stating he was working and was looking at a prosepective job out of town, did not have a set appointment but we had proof that is how he did business with the company he worked for, the hearing will be set in another month again and than that is it unless I wish to pursue this in court. What is your oppinions of this? He veered off the road due to someone trying to cut him off, the eye witness said that is what happened but does not want to say anything openly for fear she will have to go to work and lose time off of work...what do I do?

Answer

Re: Husband Dies

Good morning,

I am very sorry for your loss. My advice is very simple in this case. You need to contact an attorney immediately. You are dealing with very complex issues of causation, course of employment, death claims, and possible 3rd-party liability. I would not recommend trying to handle this alone.

Answer

Re: Husband Dies

I hope that you have an attorney who is handling this for you. You should follow that attorney's advise. If the attorney does not do court litigation, he or she will most likely tell you that you need to get another attorney to go any further. You will want to do that.

Cases of this nature are not easily won. There are "legitimate" issues on both sides (especially if you listen to the whining of people hired by the Companies who are paid money to compensate those injured on the job and then want to fight their responsibility every step of the way.!)

Hang in there and fight this. I am sure you can get an attorney to fight this for you on a contingency basis. At this point it is pretty clear that you need an experienced trial attorney because this case is going to Court!

I have been representing seriously injured people and their family member for 33 years. If you do not have an attorney and have questions, I will be happy to talk to you on the telephone. Not charge or obligation for the confidential call.

Good Luck!

DHD