Back injuries are a very common type of injury. In some circumstances, if you hurt your back, you may be entitled to compensation. We have explained various kinds of compensation claims below and injured people will often receive a compensation payout as part of personal injury compensation. It is essentially a payout for the losses you have suffered as a result of your injury.

Back Injury at Work

Workplace back injury compensation is one of the most common types of back injury claim. The typical stereotype is that a manual worker who is lifting a heavy load. Circumstances can include incorrect lifting technique and insufficient safety equipment, as a result he or she hurts their back. While manual workers remain the biggest group of victims for workplace back injuries. Increasingly, there more and more white collar workers who are reporting workplace injuries. In most of the cases, long duration of sitting is a contributing factor to workplace injury of white-collar workers.

If you hurt your back at work, you may seek workers compensation payout by agreement with the workers compensation insurer or through WorkCover if there is a dispute. The process lodging a workers compensation claim is straight forward. The real complication is managing the claim process and get a fair outcome for your workers compensation claim.

A typical scenario is that a worker made a claim for workers compensation. The employer’s insurer will step in. They provide advice and some necessary treatment. Later on the workers comprensation insurer will send the injured worker to see an insurance doctor. The insurance doctor often certifies injured worker to go back to work fairly early on, so that it will reduce the amount of workers compensation salary the employer will have to pay.

In this situation, it is within the right of the injured worker to voice their concern and to seek second opinion about their recovery. Unfortunately, for an injured worker, it is difficult to tell if the second doctor they go to is aligned with insurer or not. The best way to go about this, instead of trial and error, is to seek a worker’s compensation lawyer who work with doctors who are more aligned with injured people.

Back Injury after Car Accident

A back injury after car accident is often part of overall symptom presentation. It is not uncommon that injured people experience delayed back pain, and the back pain gets progressively worse. In order to make a back injury compensation claim caused by a car accident, injured people need to prove that he or she is not entirely at fault. The process for determination of who is at fault, may take some time. It’s important that the injured people cooperate with ICWA where it is appropriate to do so.

A typical scenario could be getting hit from behind when your car is stationary. You may experience neck and shoulder pain at first, it then in some situation the pain moves to the back, and sometimes the knees. The injured person needs to seek medical attention and report all symptoms regardless how small it is. If there is no significant held up in the investigation, within 3 months, you should be hearing back from ICWA with a decision about whether your claim is accepted.

While it is tempting to accept the first offer made by the insurer shortly after the accident. It is important to wait until your injury reaches a stabilisation point before you considering settling your claim. For most of the injured people who never dealt with a car accident injury claim, the biggest challenge is figuring out when is the best time to settle.

If you have made a claim for back injury due to car accident, it is advisable to seek legal advice. An experienced personal injury lawyer should be able to advice you best way to go with your personal injury claim.

Other Back Injury Claims

Other back injury claims may include, but not limited to:

• Public liability claims – i.e., back injury at a public place. For example, you go to a shopping centre, and a large item falls from the shelf and hits your back.
• Criminal injury claims – i.e., back injury due to a criminal act. For example, you go to a pub, and got back injury as a bystander of a bar fight.

Overall, back injury is common cause of personal injury claim. If you suffered a back injury, it is important to know your rights and entitlements.