Careless Pedestrian Collects Workers’ Compensation Benefits, Back Wages, and Insurance Recovery

Our client negligently ran across the street to get to work. He was hit by a van and suffered injuries that prevented him from returning to work. Normally, a person who is negligent cannot collect for injuries suffered in an accident. However, Lundy Law pressed the case for workers’ compensation benefits because, under the law, negligence is not a defense to paying workers’ compensation benefits.

Ordinarily, a person on his way to work is not covered by the Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Act, but there are several exceptions. In this case, one of the exceptions applied: if an employee of a temporary agency does not have a fixed place of employment and is traveling to his temporary place of employment, he can collect workers’ compensation benefits.

Lundy Law litigated this complex case for more than a year. At the time of the accident, our client was on his way to work for a company that had a contract with the federal government to stuff mail bags. Under the law, even though the temporary agency our client was working for was not a federal agency, the law required that the temporary company pay our client the federal minimum wage. The increase was an extra six dollars per hour above what the client was actually paid.

The temporary agency fought paying the increased wages and back wages for the duration that our client had worked. Eventually, the judge in the case made his award of benefits as well as back wages, all based on the higher federal minimum wage. The entire workers’ compensation benefits paid to the client was well over $100,000.

Then Lundy Law tackled the next part of the case. Since the worker did not own a vehicle at the time of the accident, he was entitled to personal injury protection (PIP) from the van that hit him, regardless of fault. The van carried $1 million of insurance, so it paid most of the workers’ benefits during the litigation.

Finally, the PIP carrier paid the client a significant settlement amount.