Workers’ compensation pays an injured worker some benefits, but it was never designed to cover everything a serious job site injury takes. As a Peoria construction accident lawyer, Joel E. Brown investigates whether a contractor, equipment company, property owner, or another third party also shares responsibility, opening a path to compensation that workers’ comp alone does not provide.
Joel has 34 years of legal experience, and when you hire Joel E. Brown, P.C., Joel personally handles your case. Call for a free case review to discuss what happened and whether your construction injury may support claims beyond workers’ compensation.
I’m Injured. Do I Have Grounds for Both a Personal Injury Claim and Workers’ Compensation?
Yes, some injured construction workers can pursue workers’ compensation benefits and a separate personal injury claim against a third party. The two claims ask different questions:
- Workers’ compensation generally provides benefits for covered work injuries without requiring an employee to prove that the employer was at fault. The Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission handbook sets out the categories of benefits available to qualifying employees, including medical care and disability benefits.
- A third-party claim asks a different question: Did someone other than your employer contribute to your injury?
The statute writes in the trade-off. Section 5(a) of the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Act, 820 ILCS 305/5, bars a common law damages suit against your own employer in return for no-fault benefits. Section 5(b) of the same statute preserves your right to sue a third party whose conduct caused the injury.
Section 5(b) also decides who keeps the money. Your employer or its insurer can claim a lien on a third-party recovery for the compensation it has paid or will pay, and unless the parties agree otherwise, the statute requires the employer to pay your attorney 25% of the amount it is reimbursed, plus its share of the costs. That lien is why a third-party case has to be built with the comp file in view from the first week.
A third-party claim may be an option when we can tie your injury to:
- A contractor employed by a different company
- Defective construction machinery or tools
- A commercial driver entering or leaving the worksite
- Unsafe work performed by another subcontractor
- Property conditions controlled by someone other than the worker’s employer
That list is not exhaustive. The contracts and site records usually show which of these connections exist, and Joel reviews them before advising you on whether a third-party claim makes sense.
Who Is Ultimately Responsible for My Construction Accident in Peoria?
We examine every party with a stake in the site, the operation, or the circumstances of your injury. In many construction accident cases, we consider whether liability lies with:
- General contractors
- Subcontractors
- Property owners
- Equipment manufacturers or distributors
- Delivery and transportation companies
- Other businesses or individuals
Simply being involved with a construction project does not make a person or business responsible for an injury. Contracts, inspection records, and who controlled the work determine the answer.
Common Construction Accidents in the Peoria Area
Construction changes from project to project, but the hazards repeat: heights, heavy materials, moving vehicles, electricity, trenches, temporary structures, and powerful machinery.
Our Peoria construction accident attorney handles cases for clients injured due to:
- Falls from roofs, scaffolds, ladders, platforms, or unfinished structures
- Falling tools, building materials, and other objects
- Crane and hoisting accidents
- Forklift, excavator, loader, and heavy-equipment incidents
- Trench and excavation collapses
- Electrical injuries
- Construction truck and delivery vehicle crashes
- Workers caught in or between machinery, materials, or structures
- Accidents involving several contractors in the same area
Falls, struck-by incidents, electrocutions, and caught-in-or-between incidents each map to a published federal standard. When a fall protection, scaffold, or trench requirement in the OSHA construction standards wasn’t met, that failure often points to which company controlled the work.
These incidents happen on commercial developments near downtown Peoria, industrial projects along the Illinois River, road projects crossing the metro, or job sites in East Peoria, Pekin, Morton, or Washington. Wherever yours happened, Joel will come to you if your injuries make the trip downtown hard.
What Will a Peoria Construction Injury Lawyer Investigate When Building My Case?
We need to know exactly what happened to cause your injury, and at the same time, who and what stood behind it: the people, businesses, equipment, and contracts. Seeing both views at once creates a clear picture of the case.
Across 34 years of practice, we have seen the value of:
- Jobsite photographs and video
- Incident and safety reports
- Witness statements
- Contracts between contractors and subcontractors
- Equipment ownership and maintenance records
- Inspection records
- Training and work records
- Medical documentation
- Communications concerning the project or accident
- Available information about who directed or controlled the task
Some of this evidence disappears once a project moves on, so Joel works to secure photos, records, and witness accounts before the site changes.
While you recover, we build.
Serious Jobsite Injuries Can Affect Work, Home, and the Future
Joel investigates how the injury happened and documents what it has cost you, from the first hospital bill to the job you may never return to.
When an Injury Ends a Career in the Trades
A catastrophic injury claim doesn’t close when initial medical care ends. The claim must account for what the injury permanently changed: an inability to return to the trade, reduced earning capacity over a working lifetime, or a career that has to start over in a different field. Those are losses a workers’ compensation schedule was never built to measure, and they must be documented and proven rather than assumed.
These effects extend beyond earning power. They may change a person’s ability to work in the trades, care for family members, or live as independently as before.
What Compensation Can Workers’ Comp Provide After a Construction Injury?
The two paths differ most in what they pay for. Workers’ compensation provides benefits strictly defined by Illinois law, and an injured worker should not walk away from them.
The Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission explains that workers’ compensation benefits can include:
- Reasonable and necessary medical care
- Temporary total disability benefits are paid while an injured employee cannot work at all during recovery
- Temporary partial disability benefits are paid when an employee returns to reduced or lighter duty at lower pay while still healing
- Vocational rehabilitation and maintenance benefits
- Permanent partial disability benefits are paid for a lasting impairment that still allows some work
- Permanent total disability benefits are paid when an injury permanently prevents a return to any regular employment
- Death benefits for qualifying surviving family members
Essential as they are, these categories have limits, and their value may not cover all of the harm a worker and their family face. When a construction accident is fatal, the family may also have a wrongful death claim against the responsible third party, separate from comp death benefits.
A Third-Party Claim Expands What You Can Recover
A third-party case can address losses workers’ compensation doesn’t cover. That is the practical reason to look past the comp claim.
Depending on the circumstances, here is how the two paths compare:
| Type of loss | Workers’ compensation | Third-party injury claim |
| Medical care | Reasonable and necessary treatment | Past and future medical expenses |
| Lost wages | Two-thirds of the average weekly wage while off work, within state limits | Full lost income |
| Future earning capacity | Permanent disability benefits set by statutory formulas | The full reduction in earning capacity over a working life |
| Pain and suffering | Not paid as a separate benefit | Recoverable |
| Emotional distress and loss of a normal life | Not paid | Recoverable |
| Proof of fault | Not required | Required, and damages are reduced by the worker’s share of fault |
The pain and suffering row is often the largest difference between the two paths. Workers’ compensation pays for residual pain only as part of a permanent disability rating, while a third-party claim can compensate the physical pain and emotional distress themselves.
Fault works differently on this side. Under Illinois’ modified comparative fault rule, a worker found more than 50% at fault recovers nothing from the third party, and a worker found 50% or less at fault has the award reduced by that share.
If a jury values the losses at $400,000 and assigns the worker 20% of the fault, the recovery becomes $320,000. Defense lawyers know this math, which is why Joel builds the fault record from the start instead of letting the other side define it.
Work With a Peoria Construction Accident Attorney Who Handles Your Case Personally
When you hire Joel E. Brown, P.C., you get Joel E. Brown. He does not outsource or hand off construction accident cases, and we stay in close communication throughout.
- 34 years of experience: Joel has practiced law since 1992 and is licensed in Illinois and Missouri.
- Prompt, in-person access: Joel aims to meet qualified callers in person within one business day, and he will travel to you if your injuries keep you close to home.
- Straightforward contingency fees: We use a flat contingency percentage with no fee escalators, so the number you agree to is the number that holds.
- Local familiarity: Joel’s office is in downtown Peoria, and cases from Peoria County and Tazewell County alike are heard in Illinois’ Tenth Judicial Circuit.
- Plain-English communication: We explain the process without burying you in jargon, and we are comfortable with construction terminology when the details matter.
Before you decide, you can review Joel’s past case results. To sit across from the lawyer who would handle your case, call for a free case review with Joel Brown.
What to Bring to Your Free Case Review
Bring whatever information you already have, and do not put off the meeting because the file feels thin. Anything on this list helps, and none of it is required:
- The accident or incident report
- Photos or videos of the scene
- Names and contact information for witnesses
- Medical discharge paperwork or records
- Workers’ compensation letters or notices
- Pay records showing missed work
- Information identifying contractors on the project
- Equipment names, models, or photographs
- Emails, texts, or other communications about the accident
If you have none of these yet, come anyway. Joel can request the reports and records once he takes the case.
How Long Do I Have to File a Construction Injury Lawsuit in Illinois?
Deadlines are critically important to your case, but they are not a simple subject. A construction injury can run on three separate clocks at once, and they do not line up:
- 735 ILCS 5/13-202, the general Illinois deadline for many personal injury lawsuits, requires filing within two years of the injury.
- 735 ILCS 5/13-214 can apply to claims against anyone who designed, planned, supervised, managed, or built an improvement to real property. It generally allows four years from when you knew or reasonably should have known of the act or omission, with a 10-year outer limit from the act itself.
- The workers’ compensation claim runs on its own schedule entirely. An employee generally has 45 days to give the employer notice of the injury, and three years from the date of injury, or two years from the last payment of compensation, whichever is later, to file the claim with the Commission.
Because these clocks can run out on different dates, Joel works out which ones apply to your injury at the first meeting.
FAQs: Peoria Construction Accident Lawyer
Construction injuries raise practical questions beyond the benefits and liability issues above. These come up most often.
Can I have a claim if I am a union construction worker?
Union membership alone does not prevent a construction worker from filing a third-party personal injury claim. Union projects often involve several contractors, subcontractors, and equipment providers, and we need to examine those relationships after a serious injury.
What if I was injured in East Peoria instead of Peoria?
Joel represents people injured throughout the greater Peoria area, including East Peoria, Pekin, Morton, and Washington, not only inside Peoria city limits. Peoria County and Tazewell County are both in Illinois’ Tenth Judicial Circuit, and you can generally file an East Peoria injury case in Tazewell County, where it happened, or in the county where the defendant resides.
Does an OSHA investigation decide whether I can recover compensation?
An OSHA investigation does not decide whether you can recover compensation, because it asks only whether an employer violated a federal safety standard and should pay a penalty to the government. A personal injury case asks whether someone owed you a duty, breached it, and caused your losses. A citation can be useful evidence, and its absence does not end a claim.
Can an independent contractor file a construction injury claim?
An independent contractor hurt on an Illinois construction site may bring a personal injury claim against a negligent company on the project, and the workers’ compensation bar that protects employers does not apply if the worker was not truly an employee. Whether someone is an employee or an independent contractor turns on the facts, especially who controlled the work, so the label a company uses is not the final word.
What if rented equipment caused my injury?
Renting equipment does not automatically make a rental company or another business responsible. The evidence must support a legal basis for the claim, including who owned the machine, who maintained it, its condition when supplied, whether it was later altered, and how it was operated.
Call Joel E. Brown, P.C., for a Free Peoria Construction Accident Case Review
After a construction accident, a workers’ compensation claim may be only the beginning. If another contractor, property owner, equipment company, or driver contributed to what happened, Illinois law may offer a separate path to compensation.
Joel puts his approach this way: “I can’t do anything about what happened yesterday, but I can affect your tomorrow.” After a job site injury, that tomorrow often depends on finding every company that shares responsibility before the filing deadlines pass.
If you were hurt on a construction site in Peoria, East Peoria, Pekin, Morton, Washington, or elsewhere in the metro, call Joel E. Brown, P.C., at (309) 673-4357 for a free case review.
