Construction sites are some of the most dangerous workplaces in the country. Heavy equipment, open heights, live electrical lines, and rotating crews of subcontractors all operate in close quarters, and when something goes wrong, it results in serious injuries. Broken bones, traumatic brain injuries, spinal damage, amputations, and fatalities happen on Florida job sites every year, leaving workers and their families trying to piece together what comes next while they’re dealing with pain, hospital bills, and lost income.
If you were hurt on a construction site, the legal situation is more complicated than most people expect. Multiple parties may share liability. Workers’ compensation may not cover everything you’re owed. OSHA regulations, general contractor obligations, and property owner duties all interact in ways that aren’t obvious. Getting the wrong lawyer, or waiting too long to find one, can cost you far more than you realize.
Goldman & Daszkal & Stallone, based in Deerfield Beach and serving clients throughout South Florida, has been fighting for injured people for over 34 years. The firm has recovered more than half a billion dollars across 5,000+ successful cases, and Joseph Stallone and the team approach every construction accident case with the kind of hands-on advocacy that complex injury claims demand.
Why Construction Accident Cases Are Different
If you’ve ever been injured on a job site, you already know that a construction accident isn’t anything like a car crash or a slip on a wet grocery store floor. Legally, it isn’t either.
What’s different about construction accidents is that there are often a dozen or so parties you could potentially file against. A construction site can have general contractors, multiple subcontractors, a rental company, the property owner, the product manufacturer, site managers, and more all on one property. You must identify who was at fault for the specific accident.
Workers’ comp seems like the obvious route to follow after a work injury. But in some ways, it’s the worst path to follow once the dust has cleared. Workers’ compensation pays out regardless of fault. That means no one can blame you for your own injury when you file. And your compensation is available whether you were negligent or not.
It won’t, however, provide damages for your pain and suffering, or any permanent injuries that keep you from ever working again. And it won’t touch the manufacturer of the defective piece of equipment that caused your fall in the first place.
A construction accident attorney who has experience in these cases will pursue all the different potential avenues unavailable to a workers’ comp attorney. And that means getting you as much help as possible if you suffer a debilitating injury on the job site.
Things get more complicated if you’re not a standard W-2 employee. Independent contractors, undocumented workers, and workers placed through outside staffing agencies often face coverage disputes about whether workers’ comp even applies to them. Florida’s rules in these situations are specific, and the wrong assumption about your employment status can close off compensation you were entitled to. An attorney who handles construction cases regularly will know which framework applies to yours from the first conversation.
Common Causes of Construction Accidents and Injuries
According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), falls are the leading cause of death in construction, accounting for roughly a third of all construction worker fatalities each year. They are part of what OSHA calls the “Fatal Four,” alongside being struck by an object, electrocution, and caught-in/between accidents, which together account for the majority of construction deaths.
There are plenty of common causes of workplace injuries, but the most prevalent is a fall from a ladder, a roof, or an unsecured scaffold. That’s considered an OSHA violation, and there’s legal recourse against the person or company who was responsible for maintaining a safe work environment.
Other causes include workers being hit by vehicles or falling debris. There are also accidents where workers have been crushed by equipment or caught between a construction machine and an obstacle. Common grounds for building accident claims include:
- Falls from rooftops, ladders, or scaffolding because there wasn’t proper fall protection.
- Malfunctioning machinery, such as lifting equipment, cranes, and power tools.
- Collapse of excavation or trenching projects.
- Electrical accidents involving improperly isolated wiring or live circuitry.
- Injuries from being struck by debris, vehicles, or machinery.
- The site’s non-compliance with safety regulations and lack of proper training.
The nature of a case can depend on the exact type of accident. The root cause determines who is responsible, which claims you can bring, and how strong a case you may have. An experienced construction attorney can review an accident with a critical eye. They won’t blindly accept the version of the story told by your employer or insurance company; they’ll search for the truth.
The True Cost of Construction Site Injuries
There’s a reason that injuries on construction sites tend to be severe. The forces involved—machinery, high elevations, live electricity, and heavy building materials—don’t just lead to small injuries. We have handled cases involving traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, paralysis, crush injuries, severe burn injuries, and amputations.
A construction injury victim’s long-term damages are often undervalued. Medical costs for a serious spinal cord injury can amount to millions of dollars over a lifetime. If an individual’s ability to work is reduced, their lost income isn’t going to be a temporary setback. Their pain, the things they are no longer able to experience, and the toll on their families are all valuable aspects of their claim that are not always covered when an insurance adjuster presents an offer. Every personal injury claim should aim to be comprehensive, not limited to only what an adjuster is willing to include.
Liability in Construction Accidents: Who Is Responsible?
This is where things start to get complex, and where a personal injury lawyer becomes an absolutely important asset.
Liability in any construction accident usually extends beyond one person to many. The main contractor usually bears the largest responsibility for the safety of the entire construction site. But there may also be liability for a subcontractor who created a danger, a site owner who knew about a hazardous situation and did nothing, or a manufacturer who sold you a defective product. Knowing who is to blame is something experienced construction accident lawyers know how to figure out.
Florida’s comparative fault standards do allow you to seek compensation even if you share some of the blame, as long as the defendant’s fault is greater than yours. However, don’t assume that the construction company or their insurer is going to leave you with anything close to 100% of the blame off your shoulders without trying to pin as much as possible on you. It happens in virtually every serious case, and the investigation conducted in those initial weeks, while the site is still intact and witnesses are fresh and available, will help protect you from this. The theme that ties all of this together is negligence. If a general contractor, property owner, or subcontractor did not take reasonable precautions, ignored OSHA requirements, or allowed conditions that foreseeably put workers in danger, they could be found at fault. The strength of your case can depend on how well and how fast that evidence is preserved.
OSHA Investigations and Your Injury Case
After a significant construction accident or fatality, OSHA usually investigates the site. The agency’s record-keeping—citations, inspection records, and findings of violations—can play an important role in a civil case. An OSHA citation does not mean your case against the employer is settled, but it can provide key evidence that unsafe conditions or a failure to follow workplace safety protocols occurred. Jurors and judges understand that this has an impact on fault.
What if there’s no OSHA investigation into the accident? That does not mean you won’t have a strong case. It just means you need to hire an attorney to make sure they get all the information they need. Many severe construction injuries go unreported, and some employers might discourage or attempt to prevent their employees from filing a formal claim with OSHA. It is critical that an attorney gets this information on your behalf, instead of you waiting to find the records yourself.
How Long Injured Workers Have to File a Lawsuit
This can be a surprise to workers who are injured on the job and don’t find out it might be too late until after a lawsuit can no longer be filed.
In Florida, the statute of limitations on most personal injury cases is two years from the date the accident occurred. This was changed in 2023; formerly, the window was four years. There are separate time limits on filing workers’ compensation claims that are often shorter. Once that statute of limitations has passed, you’ve missed the deadline. No good lawyer is likely to get you around that time frame.
There are some exceptions, though—for example, where you had not experienced immediate pain and symptoms from your construction injury, or where you were not capable of filing a personal injury lawsuit for some reason. However, those exceptions are difficult and costly to establish. The practical advice remains that if you get hurt on a job site, it’s time to talk to a lawyer right away.
How to Choose a Construction Accident Lawyer
Many personal injury law firms can represent you after a significant construction accident. But that does not mean they all can do so equally well. When you are evaluating potential lawyers for a significant work site injury, consider the following:
Experience with complex construction lawsuits: Many firms can take you from a motor vehicle crash into court. However, that’s very different from representing you in a lawsuit against the site’s general contractor, subcontractors, defective product manufacturers, and more. A good construction accident lawyer will know the ins and outs of the law in South Florida and can advise you on where your claim might fit within that legal structure, including workers’ compensation and civil law. Ask your lawyer about their experience with multi-defendant lawsuits, and ask for details on how they handled those.
Trial experience: Many injury law firms will resolve every personal injury case with a settlement. That may or may not be fine for a simple case. However, if the defendants in a construction lawsuit are actively contesting liability, the lawyer must be prepared to take your case to trial. Insurance companies know which attorneys have real trial experience and which ones won’t fight. Goldman & Daszkal & Stallone’s reputation has been forged by 34 years of trial work, not just a willingness to negotiate settlements.
Access to Investigation Resources: Many cases require accident reconstruction experts, OSHA compliance experts, injury specialists, and engineering witnesses to determine the cause. It is vital that a firm can not only pay for these experts but also has ready access to them in order to do the job right.
Communication: This is perhaps the most important issue in a client relationship. You have been hurt. You may be unable to work. You are dealing with what could be a stressful legal process lasting more than a year. You expect to have someone who keeps you in the loop about your case. A firm that sends you to the paralegal or secretary for answers, if it responds at all, is not going to serve you properly. You want a firm like Goldman & Daszkal & Stallone that is led by an attorney who personally handles his clients, like Joseph Stallone.
Contingency fee arrangement: All reputable personal injury law firms that focus on construction accidents will handle them on a contingency basis. That means no fee unless you receive a recovery.
Compensation in a Construction Accident Case
A serious construction accident case can result in a substantial financial award to cover much more than a trip to the emergency room. Your current and future medical expenses comprise one part of your claim, as do any lost wages. In addition, compensation can be obtained for a loss of future earning capacity if you cannot return to work. Damages can also cover mental anguish, pain and suffering, and loss of the enjoyment of life. When these cases are serious, the non-economic damages can outweigh the medical losses, lost wages, and disability.
In a death caused by a construction accident, a family member can bring what is known as a wrongful death case. A wrongful death case is different from an injury claim but also provides compensation. Goldman & Daszkal handles catastrophic injury cases and wrongful death cases to the full extent allowed by law.
Talk to a Construction Accident Attorney Today
If you are injured in a South Florida construction accident, contact Goldman Daszkal & Stallone, a full-service personal injury firm, for a free consultation and a no-obligation case evaluation to assess the value of your case. Our personal injury attorneys in Florida work on a contingency basis, which means we do not charge upfront, and our fee is taken from your final settlement. To schedule your free consultation, call Goldman Daszkal & Stallone at (954) 428-9333 or click here. For more than 34 years, the firm has recovered more than half a billion dollars in damages on behalf of its clients.
Don’t wait to contact an attorney; the sooner an attorney can go to the site, interview witnesses, and start the investigation, the better prepared you will be if a lawsuit is filed.
