Columbus Construction Accident Attorney

Why Construction Injury Cases Are Different

A construction site is unlike almost any other workplace, and the legal consequences follow directly from that.

On a typical commercial project, a single site holds a property owner, a developer, a general contractor, a construction manager, a dozen or more subcontractors, equipment lessors, material suppliers, delivery drivers, engineers, and staffing agency workers. All of them are on the same ground at the same time, and most of them do not work for each other.

That matters enormously, because Ohio’s workers’ compensation system generally bars you from suing your own employer. It does not bar you from suing anyone else. When the electrician working for a different subcontractor energizes a panel that shocks you, or when a crane rigged by another company drops a load, or when a lift malfunctions because of a design defect, those are ordinary negligence claims — and unlike workers’ compensation, they pay for pain, suffering, and the full value of what the injury took from you. Our page on identifying responsible parties explains that analysis in a broader context.

Construction sites also change fast. The scaffold gets struck the next morning. The trench gets filled. The lift goes back to the rental yard. Sign-in sheets, daily reports, and toolbox talk records get boxed up. Evidence that would have proven the case is gone within weeks, sometimes days.

The Claims You May Have After a Columbus Construction Accident

This is the framework everything else on this page hangs on. Read it once and the rest will make sense.

1. Your Ohio Workers’ Compensation Claim

Ohio’s Bureau of Workers’ Compensation pays medical benefits and a portion of lost wages for work injuries on a no-fault basis. You do not have to prove anyone did anything wrong, and your own carelessness generally does not disqualify you.

The tradeoff is that workers’ compensation pays nothing for pain and suffering, nothing for loss of enjoyment of life, and only a fraction of your actual wages. For a worker with a permanent injury, the gap between what comp pays and what the injury actually cost is enormous.

Our Columbus workers’ compensation page covers the benefit categories in more detail.

2. A VSSR Additional Award

If your employer violated a specific safety rule in Ohio’s construction safety code and that violation caused your injury, the Industrial Commission can order an additional award on top of your regular benefits. This is unique to Ohio, it is paid by the employer rather than the state fund, and it is discussed in full below.

3. A Third-Party Personal Injury Lawsuit

Against anyone other than your employer whose negligence contributed. This is where full compensation lives, and it is the claim most often missed because injured workers are told the comp claim is all they have.

4. An Employer Intentional Tort Claim

Rare, narrow, and hard to prove in Ohio — but real in a small number of cases, and worth screening for.

These claims are not alternatives. A worker can pursue all four at once, and pursuing one does not forfeit the others. But they run on different clocks and are decided by different bodies, which is exactly why they need to be handled together.

Ohio’s VSSR Award: The Claim Most Injured Construction Workers Never Hear About

If you take one thing from this page, make it this section.

What a VSSR Is

VSSR stands for Violation of a Specific Safety Requirement. Ohio’s workers’ compensation system, created by constitutional amendment in 1912, included a mechanism allowing an injured worker to receive an additional award when the injury resulted from the employer’s failure to comply with a specific safety requirement.

A VSSR is not a lawsuit. It is an application filed within your existing workers’ compensation claim, decided by the Industrial Commission of Ohio after an investigation by the BWC’s Safety Violations Investigation Unit.

Ohio’s Construction Safety Code

The specific safety requirements live in the Ohio Administrative Code, organized by industry. Construction has its own chapter, OAC 4123:1-3, which covers demolition, excavation, erection, alteration, repair, painting, glazing, and related work on buildings, roads, sewers, tunnels, trenches, pipelines, and other structures.

The rules are specific rather than general, which is the whole point. They address fall protection above a set height, guardrails and toeboards around floor and roof openings, scaffold construction and load ratings, ladder requirements, personal protective equipment, and much more. Trenching and excavation have their own detailed rule covering shoring, sloping, trench boxes, spoil pile placement, and access and egress.

The excavation requirements at OAC 4123:1-3-13 are worth knowing about specifically, because trench collapses are among the most lethal and most preventable construction events, and the rule is unambiguous about what protective systems are required.

What You Have to Prove

• A specific safety requirement existed and applied to your employer and your work
• Your employer failed to comply with it at the time of the accident
• That failure was a proximate cause of your injury
• You have an allowed workers’ compensation claim for the same injury

The requirement must be specific rather than a general admonition to be careful. Identifying the precise rule and subsection that applies is the technical heart of a VSSR application, and it is where these claims are most often lost.

How Much a VSSR Pays

If the Industrial Commission grants the application, it orders the employer to pay an additional award of between 15 and 50 percent of the maximum weekly compensation rate. The percentage reflects the seriousness of the violation. The additional amount is paid alongside the compensation you are already receiving, which means for a worker on long-term or permanent total disability, a VSSR can be worth a substantial sum over time.

There is a second effect worth understanding. A VSSR is paid by the employer directly, not out of the state insurance fund. That gives the employer a strong financial incentive to contest it, and it is why these applications should not be filed casually or without evidentiary support.

The VSSR Deadline Changed — and It Is Shorter Than Most Articles Say

For claims arising before September 15, 2020, a VSSR application had to be filed within two years. For claims arising on or after September 15, 2020, the deadline is one year from the injury, death, or inception of disability.

A great deal of material published online still cites the old two-year figure. Building a VSSR case takes time — identifying the applicable rule, documenting the violation, and assembling proof of causation — so the practical window is much shorter than one year.

Defenses Employers Raise

• The rule does not apply. Arguing the cited requirement covers a different industry or a different activity than what you were doing.
• Compliance was impossible. A recognized affirmative defense where the employer can establish that meeting the requirement was genuinely impossible under the circumstances.
• The violation did not cause the injury. Arguing an intervening event, not the missing safeguard, produced the harm.
• The worker caused it. Arguing the employee removed, ignored, or misused equipment that was provided.

Third-Party Claims: Where Full Compensation Usually Comes From

A third-party claim is an ordinary negligence lawsuit against someone who is not your employer. It pays for medical expenses, full lost earnings and lost earning capacity, pain and suffering, disfigurement, and loss of enjoyment of life — categories workers’ compensation does not touch.

General Contractors and Construction Managers

If you work for a subcontractor, the general contractor is not your employer, so the workers’ compensation bar generally does not protect it. Whether the general contractor is liable typically depends on whether it actively participated in the injury-causing work, retained and exercised control over the specific hazard, or assumed safety responsibilities by contract and then failed to perform them.

Contracts matter enormously here. Prime contracts and subcontracts routinely assign safety obligations, require site safety plans, designate competent persons, and set inspection duties. A general contractor that contractually took responsibility for site-wide fall protection and then did not provide it is in a very different position than one that simply hired a sub and stayed away.

Other Subcontractors on the Site

The most common third-party defendant of all. A steel erector drops a beam. An excavation sub leaves an unbarricaded hole. An electrical sub energizes a circuit without lockout. A concrete crew strips forms prematurely. Each of those companies owes a duty of ordinary care to everyone else on site, and each carries its own liability insurance.

Property Owners and Developers

Owners can be liable where they retained control over the work, created a hazard themselves, or failed to disclose a dangerous condition on the premises they knew about — buried utilities, structural weakness, contamination, or unmarked hazards in an occupied building being renovated. This overlaps with ordinary premises liability principles.

Equipment and Product Manufacturers

Defective or unreasonably dangerous equipment supports a product liability claim against the manufacturer, distributor, or rental company. Recurring examples in construction include:

• Aerial lifts and scissor lifts that tip, drift, or fail to hold position
• Nail guns without sequential trip triggers
• Saws and grinders with defective or removable guarding
• Scaffolding components that fail below rated load
• Fall arrest harnesses, lanyards, and anchor points that fail in a fall
• Ladders that collapse or separate
• Cranes and hoists with control, brake, or load-indicator failures
• Trench boxes and shoring that fail in normal use

Equipment rental companies can also be liable for renting out machinery that was poorly maintained, improperly repaired, or missing safety features it left the factory with.

Drivers and Vehicle Operators

Construction workers are struck by delivery vehicles, dump trucks, concrete trucks, and passing traffic in work zones with alarming regularity. When a commercial vehicle is involved, the analysis overlaps with our Columbus truck accident practice, including federal motor carrier rules and the layers of insurance that trucking companies carry.

Engineers, Architects, and Design Professionals

Design professionals can be liable where a structural design was defective, where a temporary shoring or formwork design failed, or where the professional undertook site observation duties and did not perform them. These claims typically require an affidavit of merit or comparable expert support, so they must be identified early.

Utility Companies

Electrocution cases frequently involve utilities — inaccurate line locates before excavation, failure to de-energize or insulate lines near known work, or inadequate clearance markings. Contact with overhead power lines remains one of the deadliest events on any job site.

Staffing Agencies and Labor Brokers

Temporary and leased workers create genuinely complicated questions about who the employer is for immunity purposes. Sometimes the staffing agency is the employer and the host contractor is a suable third party. Sometimes both are treated as employers. The answer depends on the agreements and the actual control exercised, and it is worth analyzing rather than assuming.

Suing Your Own Employer: Ohio’s Narrow Intentional Tort Exception

Ohio law generally makes workers’ compensation your exclusive remedy against your employer. The exception is codified at Ohio Revised Code 2745.01, and it is genuinely narrow.

Under that statute, an employer is not liable for an intentional tort unless the plaintiff proves the employer acted with intent to injure or with the belief that injury was substantially certain to occur — and the statute defines “substantially certain” to mean deliberate intent to cause injury. Knowing that a practice is dangerous, or even reckless, is generally not enough.

The statute contains one provision that matters in construction. Deliberate removal by an employer of an equipment safety guard, or deliberate misrepresentation of a toxic or hazardous substance, creates a rebuttable presumption that the act was committed with intent to injure if injury results directly. Ohio courts have interpreted the phrase “equipment safety guard” narrowly, so whether a particular removed protection qualifies is a real fight rather than a given.

One practical point that surprises people: because these claims require deliberate intent, employers’ liability insurance policies commonly exclude them. Winning an intentional tort claim does not guarantee there is a policy to pay it. That is one more reason the third-party analysis usually matters more.

Common Columbus Construction Accidents

OSHA identifies four hazard categories responsible for the majority of construction deaths. Its published Construction Focus Four training materials address falls, struck-by incidents, caught-in or between hazards, and electrocution.

Falls From Height

The leading cause of construction fatalities year after year. Falls from roofs, scaffolds, ladders, aerial lifts, structural steel, through floor and roof openings, and through unguarded skylights. These cases turn on what fall protection was required, what was provided, what anchor points existed, whether the worker was trained, and who was responsible for site-wide fall protection under the contracts.

Struck-By Incidents

Falling tools and materials, swinging or dropped loads, collapsing masonry, flying debris from saws and grinders, and vehicles and equipment striking workers on foot. Toeboards, debris nets, exclusion zones, rigging inspection, and spotter requirements are all central issues.

Caught-In and Between, Including Trench Collapse

Trench and excavation collapses, equipment rollovers, entanglement in rotating machinery, and crushing between equipment and fixed objects. A cubic yard of soil weighs roughly as much as a small car, which is why an unprotected trench can kill in seconds and why the shoring and sloping requirements are so specific.

Electrocution and Electrical Burns

Contact with overhead power lines, contact with energized equipment during maintenance, failures of lockout and tagout procedures, damaged cords and tools, and missing ground-fault protection on temporary power. Electrical injuries frequently cause severe burn injuries requiring grafting and long-term reconstructive treatment, along with cardiac and neurological effects that are not always apparent at the scene.

Scaffold, Ladder, and Lift Failures

Improperly erected or overloaded scaffolds, missing planking or guardrails, scaffolds not tied to the structure, ladders set at the wrong angle or on unstable footing, and aerial lifts that tip or drift. These frequently involve both an employer safety failure and an equipment defect, meaning a VSSR and a product claim can arise from the same event.

Crane, Hoist, and Rigging Accidents

Dropped loads, boom collapse, outrigger failure on unstable ground, contact with power lines during lifts, and rigging that fails below rated capacity. Crane cases typically involve the crane owner, the operator’s employer, the rigging crew, the lift planner, and sometimes the manufacturer.

Fires, Explosions, and Confined Spaces

Hot work near flammable materials, gas line strikes during excavation, oxygen deficiency and toxic atmospheres in vaults and tanks, and failures of confined space entry procedures and atmospheric testing.

Repetitive Trauma and Toxic Exposure

Not every construction claim comes from a single dramatic event. Cumulative trauma to the back, shoulders, knees, and hands, hearing loss from sustained noise, and occupational disease from silica, lead, asbestos, and solvents are all compensable. These claims follow different filing rules than traumatic injuries, and the timing of when a claim accrues is its own analysis.

Heat Illness

Central Ohio summers produce heat exhaustion and heat stroke on job sites every year. Heat stroke is a medical emergency with lasting organ and neurological consequences, and cases turn on water, rest, shade, acclimatization for new workers, and whether anyone was monitoring.

Injuries We See in Construction Cases

• Traumatic brain injuries from falls and struck-by events, including injuries sustained while wearing a hard hat
• Spinal cord injuries, vertebral fractures, and paralysis
• Amputations and crush injuries to hands, arms, feet, and legs
• Complex and open fractures requiring multiple surgeries and hardware
• Severe electrical and thermal burns
• Internal organ damage and degloving injuries
• Vision and hearing loss
• Chronic back, shoulder, and knee injuries that end a trade career
• Catastrophic injuries requiring lifetime attendant care
• Post-traumatic stress, which is common after witnessing or surviving a fatal-scale event and is routinely underclaimed

For workers whose injuries permanently prevent a return to the trades, a Social Security Disability claim may also be appropriate alongside everything else.

If You Were Paid as a 1099 Independent Contractor

Do not assume you have no claim. Misclassification is widespread in construction, particularly in framing, drywall, roofing, and finish trades.

What controls is the substance of the working relationship, not the label on your paycheck. Factors that point toward employee status include who controlled how and when the work was performed, who supplied tools and materials, whether you could work for others, how you were paid, and whether the work was integral to the company’s business.

Two different outcomes are possible, and both can be good. If you were functionally an employee, you may be entitled to workers’ compensation benefits the company never told you about. If you were genuinely an independent contractor, then the workers’ compensation bar does not shield the company at all — and you may be able to sue it directly in negligence, which is often the better claim.

Either way, bring your pay records, texts, and any written agreement to your consultation.

If You Are Worried About Your Immigration Status

Fear of immigration consequences keeps injured construction workers from seeking medical care and legal advice every day in central Ohio. That fear is understandable, and it also leads to permanent, uncompensated injuries.

A few things are worth saying plainly. Get medical treatment — your health comes first, and untreated injuries get worse and harder to connect to the accident later. Ohio workers’ compensation eligibility does not simply evaporate because of immigration status, though certain benefit categories raise more complicated questions that depend on the facts. And a consultation with an attorney is confidential.

Hablo Español. Talk to someone before deciding you have no rights.

What If Your Employer Had No Workers’ Compensation Coverage?

Noncompliance is not rare among smaller construction outfits. If your employer failed to maintain coverage, you are not simply out of luck.

Ohio maintains a surplus fund that can pay benefits in claims against noncomplying employers, with the state then pursuing the employer for reimbursement. Just as importantly, an employer that failed to comply may lose the immunity that ordinarily protects it, which can open the door to a direct lawsuit.

If a supervisor told you the company “doesn’t do workers’ comp” or offered to pay your medical bills in cash to keep the injury off the books, tell your attorney. That conversation is significant.

The Deadlines That Matter — and They Are Not the Same

This is the section that costs people the most money when they get it wrong. Three separate clocks run at once, and they run at different speeds.

Workers’ Compensation: Generally One Year

For injuries occurring on or after September 29, 2017, an Ohio workers’ compensation injury claim is generally barred unless filed within one year from the date of injury. Before that date, the deadline was two years. The rule setting out the current filing requirements appears at OAC 4123-3-08.

A great deal of published material still repeats the old two-year figure. Do not rely on it. There is also a separate one-year window for adding newly identified body parts to an existing claim, which catches injured workers constantly when a shoulder or back condition is diagnosed months after the original injury.

VSSR: Generally One Year

For claims arising on or after September 15, 2020, a VSSR application must be filed within one year of the injury, death, or inception of disability. For earlier claims the deadline was two years.

Third-Party Lawsuit: Generally Two Years

Under Ohio Revised Code 2305.10, an action for bodily injury generally must be brought within two years after the cause of action accrues. A wrongful death action under Ohio Revised Code 2125.02 generally must be commenced within two years after the date of death.

Claims involving minors, occupational disease, and claims against public entities follow different timelines, and public-entity claims can carry much shorter notice requirements. Confirm the applicable dates with an attorney rather than assuming.

The practical consequence of these three clocks is simple. A worker who waits eighteen months to call a lawyer may still have a third-party case and may have permanently lost both the workers’ compensation claim and the VSSR award.

How BWC Subrogation Affects What You Actually Keep

Here is something almost no law firm page explains, and it directly determines the number on your check.

When you recover from a third party for the same injury the BWC paid benefits on, Ohio’s workers’ compensation subrogation statute gives the statutory subrogee — the BWC or a self-insured employer — a right to be reimbursed out of that recovery. The amount is governed by a statutory formula rather than a simple dollar-for-dollar payback, and it accounts for both past benefits paid and the estimated value of future benefits.

Two things follow. First, a large third-party settlement does not all belong to you, and an attorney who ignores the subrogation interest is setting up an unpleasant surprise. Second, how a settlement is negotiated, structured, and allocated among categories of damages can meaningfully change the net amount that reaches you and your family.

Coordinating the workers’ compensation claim and the third-party claim from the beginning — rather than treating them as unrelated files handled by different people — is one of the most valuable things an attorney does in a construction case.

What an OSHA Investigation Does and Does Not Do for Your Case

After a serious injury or fatality, OSHA may open an inspection. Workers routinely misunderstand what that means.

• OSHA does not get you compensation. It enforces safety regulations and issues citations and penalties payable to the government, not to you.
• A citation is evidence, not a verdict. It is meaningful proof of a safety failure, but it does not by itself establish civil liability, and its admissibility and weight are litigated.
• The inspection file is valuable. Investigator photographs, measurements, equipment documentation, and witness interviews taken close in time to the event are often the best contemporaneous record that exists, and they can be obtained.
• No citation does not mean no case. OSHA has limited resources, tight timelines, and jurisdictional limits. Many serious incidents are never inspected, and many real violations are never cited.
• Cooperate with OSHA. Tell investigators the truth about what happened. That is different from giving a recorded statement to a contractor’s liability insurer.

Evidence That Wins Construction Accident Cases

Job sites do not stay still. The single most valuable thing that happens early in a construction case is a preservation letter demanding that the site, the equipment, and the records be retained.

• The equipment itself. The lift, the ladder, the scaffold component, the saw, the harness. Once it goes back to a rental yard or gets repaired, a product claim may become unprovable.
• Photographs and video of the scene. Before the trench is filled, the guardrail is installed, or the debris is cleared. Coworkers’ phones are often the only source.
• Site surveillance and drone footage. Many commercial projects run cameras and progress documentation, and retention windows are short.
• Contracts and subcontracts. Establishing who owed which safety duty to whom.
• Daily reports, superintendent logs, and job diaries. Contemporaneous records of conditions, manpower, and problems.
• Toolbox talks, safety meeting sign-ins, and training records. Showing what was taught and what was skipped.
• Site safety plans, JHAs, and pre-task plans. Comparing the written plan to what actually happened is frequently decisive.
• Equipment inspection, maintenance, and rental records. Including prior repairs and reported defects.
• Competent person designations and inspection logs. Required for excavations, scaffolds, and fall protection.
• The OSHA inspection file. Obtained through the appropriate request process.
• Coworker witness statements. Taken early, before people move to other jobs or feel pressure about what to say.

Expert support is usually required as well — construction safety experts, engineers, accident reconstructionists, and in product cases, design experts who can establish that a safer alternative existed.

What to Do After a Construction Accident in Columbus

1. Get medical treatment immediately, and say it happened at work. The medical record is the foundation of every claim. A gap in treatment or an unclear history is used against you later.
2. Report the injury to your employer in writing. Verbal reports get disputed. Text or email creates a dated record.
3. Make sure a workers’ compensation claim is actually filed. Do not assume the company did it. You can file directly with the BWC yourself.
4. Photograph everything you safely can. The equipment, the location, the missing guardrail, the unshored trench, the conditions. Ask a coworker if you cannot.
5. Write down what happened while it is fresh. Time, weather, who was present, what you were told, what equipment you had, what you asked for.
6. Get names and personal phone numbers of witnesses. Not just company contact information. Construction crews scatter to new projects quickly.
7. Identify every company on the site. Note names on trucks, hard hats, and signage. This is how third-party defendants get found.
8. Keep your pay records. Pay stubs, 1099s, W-2s, and job records establish your wage rate and your employment status.
9. Cooperate with OSHA, but not with a contractor’s insurer. Decline recorded statements until you have spoken with an attorney.
10. Do not sign a release or accept a quick cash payment. Offers made in the first weeks arrive before anyone knows what the injury will cost.
11. Call an attorney promptly. The one-year clocks and the disappearing evidence make this genuinely time-sensitive.

Can You Be Fired for Filing a Claim?

No, and this fear stops more injured construction workers from filing than any other single factor.

Ohio law prohibits an employer from discharging, demoting, reassigning, or taking any punitive action against an employee because the employee filed or pursued a workers’ compensation claim. Retaliation claims carry their own procedures and deadlines, so if hours are cut, a layoff arrives suspiciously soon after a claim is filed, or you are moved to work you cannot physically perform, report it promptly. Our page on workplace retaliation covers this in more detail, and disability discrimination protections may also apply when an employer refuses to accommodate restrictions.

Compensation Available After a Columbus Construction Accident

What you can recover depends on which claims are available. Our page on accident compensation covers these categories in more detail.

Through Workers’ Compensation

• Authorized medical treatment, surgery, therapy, and prescriptions
• Temporary total and wage loss compensation while you cannot work
• Permanent partial and permanent total disability awards
• Scheduled loss awards for amputation and loss of use
• Vocational rehabilitation and retraining
• Death benefits for dependents

Through a VSSR Award

• An additional 15 to 50 percent of the maximum weekly compensation rate, paid alongside your regular benefits

Through a Third-Party Claim

• Full past and future medical expenses
• Full lost wages and diminished earning capacity, not a percentage
• Pain and suffering
• Disfigurement, scarring, and permanent disability
• Loss of enjoyment of life
• Loss of consortium for a spouse
• Punitive damages in cases of conscious disregard for safety, subject to Ohio’s statutory limits

Ohio does not cap economic damages. Noneconomic damages are limited in many tort actions under Ohio Revised Code 2315.18, with an important exception for permanent and substantial physical deformity, loss of use of a limb, loss of a bodily organ system, and permanent physical functional injury preventing independent self-care. Catastrophic construction injuries frequently fall within that exception. The cap does not apply to wrongful death actions.

In a third-party claim, Ohio applies modified comparative fault under Ohio Revised Code 2315.33. Your recovery is reduced by your share of fault and barred only if you were more than 50 percent responsible. Expect the defense to argue you were not using provided equipment, ignored training, or created the hazard yourself.

If Your Family Lost Someone on a Job Site

Construction fatalities leave families dealing with grief, sudden loss of income, and a set of legal deadlines nobody warned them about.

Dependents may be eligible for workers’ compensation death benefits, and dependents can also file a VSSR application. Separately, the estate’s personal representative can bring a wrongful death claim against responsible third parties for the benefit of the surviving spouse, children, and parents, covering lost financial support, lost services, funeral and burial expenses, and the family’s loss of society, companionship, and guidance. Our Columbus wrongful death attorney page explains how an estate is opened and who has authority to bring the claim.

These three paths run on different deadlines. A first conversation costs nothing and commits you to nothing, and it can preserve evidence that will otherwise be gone within weeks.

Talk to a Columbus Construction Accident Attorney Today

Call 614-300-5000 or 866-866-8058. Consultations are free and available 24/7. You pay no legal fee unless we win.

You can also contact our Columbus office or request a free case evaluation online. Hablo Español.

How a Construction Accident Case Gets Built

1. Free consultation. We go through what happened, who was on site, how you were paid, and what has been filed. No charge, no obligation.
2. Immediate preservation. Letters go to the employer, the general contractor, equipment owners, and rental companies demanding that equipment, site conditions, video, and records be retained.
3. Protect the workers’ compensation claim. Confirming it was filed, that all injured body parts are included, and that the one-year windows have not been missed.
4. VSSR screening. Identifying whether a specific safety requirement in the construction code applies and was violated, and filing the application within the deadline.
5. Map the site. Contracts, subcontracts, certificates of insurance, and daily reports establish who was present and who owed what duty.
6. Investigate and inspect. Scene documentation, equipment inspection before it is altered, witness interviews, and the OSHA file.
7. Build the damages picture. Treating physicians and, where warranted, life care planners, vocational experts, and economists establish lifetime cost.
8. Identify coverage. Every applicable policy across every entity on the site, including additional insured endorsements.
9. Address subrogation. Negotiating the statutory subrogation interest so more of the recovery reaches you.
10. Demand and negotiate. A documented demand goes to the carriers once damages are understood.
11. Litigation if necessary. Suit filed in the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas or appropriate venue, through discovery, depositions, and trial if required. Our page on filing a lawsuit explains what that process looks like.

What It Costs to Hire Us

Nothing up front. Construction accident cases are handled on a contingency fee, meaning the fee comes out of what is recovered. There is no hourly billing and no retainer, and if there is no recovery there is no attorney fee. Attorney fees in Ohio workers’ compensation matters are also subject to regulation and approval.

The consultation is free and is a real evaluation. If we do not think there is a claim worth pursuing, we will tell you.

Why Choose Michael D. Christensen Law Offices

Attorney Mike Christensen has represented injured people and grieving families throughout greater Columbus, handling serious injury and wrongful death matters. Construction cases reward attorneys who treat the workers’ compensation claim, the VSSR, and the third-party lawsuit as one coordinated problem rather than three unrelated files.

• Local and reachable. Our office is at 3341 W. Broad Street in Columbus, serving Franklin County and the surrounding counties.
• All available claims screened. Workers’ compensation, VSSR, third-party liability, product liability, and intentional tort.
• Fast evidence preservation. Job sites change within days. Demands go out early.
• Every company on the site considered. General contractor, subcontractors, owner, equipment suppliers, and staffing agencies.
• Attention to your net recovery. Subrogation and settlement structure are handled, not ignored.
• Hablo Español. Spanish-language assistance is available.
• No fee unless you win. No upfront cost and no hourly billing.
• Available 24/7. Job site accidents do not happen on a schedule.

Free Consultation With a Columbus Construction Accident Lawyer

If you were hurt on a Columbus construction site, call 614-300-5000 now. The consultation is free, the call is confidential, and you owe no fee unless we recover for you. Deadlines in Ohio construction cases can be as short as one year.