Long Island Workers’ Comp Lawyer

If You Were Hurt at Work on Long Island, You May Have More Than a Workers’ Comp Claim

Getting hurt at work can change everything. One moment you are doing your job, the next you are dealing with medical treatment, missed paychecks, and uncertainty about what comes next. All around Long Island, injured workers turn to workers’ compensation for help, only to realize that the benefits are very limited.

At Palermo Law, we have spent more than 25 years representing injured workers and their families across Nassau and Suffolk Counties. Our firm has recovered over $75 million in verdicts and settlements, earned more than 400 five-star Google reviews, and built a team that operates out of nine offices across Long Island. We have the resources, the experience, and the local knowledge to pursue every available avenue of recovery for our clients.

One of the most important things injured workers need to understand is this:

Workers’ compensation is only part of the picture.

In many cases, there may be a separate personal injury claim against a third party (meaning anyone other than your employer responsible for your injury), and that claim is often where any really meaningful financial recovery comes from.

While workers’ compensation provides basic benefits, it does not compensate for pain and suffering or the full extent of what you’ve lost because of an injury. Our role at Palermo Law is to identify when a third-party claim exists and pursue that case aggressively while the workers’ compensation claim proceeds in the background.

Why Choose Palermo Law

When you are hurt at work, you are not just choosing a lawyer. You are choosing how hard someone is going to fight for you, how much of the available compensation you will actually recover, and how well you will be taken care of during one of the most difficult periods of your life. That choice matters more than most people realize.

Palermo Law has spent more than 25 years building a practice focused on one thing: serious injury cases on Long Island. We are not a general practice firm that handles injury cases on the side. This is what we do, every day, for clients across Nassau and Suffolk Counties. That focus has produced results. We have recovered over $75 million in verdicts and settlements, secured multi-million-dollar outcomes in cases that other firms might have settled for far less, and earned more than 400 five-star Google reviews from clients who trusted us with some of the hardest moments of their lives.

With nine offices across Long Island, we are never far from the communities we serve. Whether your accident happened on a construction site in Hauppauge, a warehouse in Central Islip, or a highway work zone on the LIE, we know this area, we know the courts, and we know how to build the kind of case that produces real results in this jurisdiction.

Every case we take is guided by three commitments:

We handle all cases on a contingency fee basis. There are no upfront costs, no hourly fees, and no legal bills unless we recover compensation for you. You have nothing to lose by calling us, and potentially everything to gain.

Understanding Workers’ Compensation in New York

Workers’ compensation is a no-fault system designed to provide benefits to employees who are injured on the job. In New York, most employers are required by law to carry workers’ compensation insurance, and the program is administered by the New York State Workers’ Compensation Board. Because it is a no-fault system, you do not need to prove that your employer or co-workers did anything wrong in order to receive benefits. The tradeoff is that your employer, in most circumstances, cannot be sued directly for the injury by you regardless of how it occurred.

What Workers’ Compensation Does — and Doesn’t — Cover

Workers’ compensation benefits provide a safety net, but they are deliberately limited in scope. The system was designed as a compromise: employees receive guaranteed, quick benefits without needing to prove fault, and employers are shielded from direct lawsuits. That tradeoff works in favor of employers. For injured workers, it usually means receiving far less than the injury actually cost them.

For many injured workers, especially those with serious injuries, these gaps are significant. A worker who suffers a permanent back injury, a traumatic brain injury, or a career-ending orthopedic injury will quickly find out that workers’ compensation covers only a fraction of what the injury has actually cost them. This is particularly true in construction accident cases on Long Island, where third-party claims against general contractors and property owners often produce recoveries that dwarf what workers’ compensation alone would provide. Understanding what workers’ comp does not cover is the first step toward understanding why a third-party claim matters.

The Difference Between Workers’ Compensation and a Third-Party Claim

Most injured workers know about workers’ compensation. Fewer realize there may be a second, separate claim available to them that can result in significantly greater compensation. Understanding the difference between the two is one of the most important things you can do after a work injury.

Workers’ compensation is a claim against your employer’s insurance. A third-party claim is a separate personal injury lawsuit against someone other than your employer whose negligence contributed to your accident. They are two different legal systems with very different rules and very different outcomes.

Workers’ Compensation

Workers’ compensation is a no-fault system, meaning you do not need to prove anyone was negligent to receive benefits. You simply report the injury and file a claim. In exchange for that simplicity, the benefits are capped and limited in what they cover.

• No fault required — benefits are available regardless of who caused the accident
• Covers medical treatment related to the injury
• Pays a portion of lost wages, typically around two-thirds of your average weekly wage
• Does not compensate for pain and suffering
• Does not cover the full value of your lost income
• You cannot sue your employer for more, even if they were negligent

Third-Party Personal Injury Claim

A third-party claim is a lawsuit filed in civil court against a person or company outside your employer who was responsible for your injury. Unlike workers’ compensation, you must prove negligence. But if you can, the compensation available is much greater.

• Requires proof of negligence by a party other than your employer
• Filed against a contractor, property owner, driver, equipment manufacturer, or other responsible party
• Allows recovery for pain and suffering, which workers’ compensation never provides
• Covers full lost wages, not just a portion
• Can include compensation for future medical costs and permanent disability
• Can result in significantly higher total recovery than workers’ compensation alone

In many cases, both claims can be pursued at the same time. Workers’ compensation provides immediate income and medical coverage while the third-party case is being built and pursued against the at-fault party. The two are separate proceedings, but they are connected, and how they are handled together matters. An experienced attorney can help ensure that pursuing one claim does not inadvertently hurt the other.

The bottom line: workers’ compensation keeps you afloat. A third-party claim is where full and fair recovery is made possible.

When Does a Third-Party Claim Exist?

A third-party claim may arise when someone other than your employer is responsible for causing or contributing to your injury.

Common examples include:

These cases often require a full investigation to find all responsible parties.

Common Work Accidents on Long Island

Long Island’s economy spans construction, healthcare, transportation, utilities, retail, and municipal government, and serious workplace injuries happen across all of them. Nassau County’s dense commercial areas and Suffolk County’s expanding residential and industrial spaces have generated steady construction activity, bringing with it a corresponding rise in job site accidents. Healthcare workers at major hospital systems face slip and fall hazards and patient-handling injuries. Warehouse and distribution workers in central Suffolk face repetitive stress injuries and loading dock accidents. Municipal employees working on county roads, parks, and utilities face hazards that often involve drivers, third-party contractors or defective equipment. What many of these workers have in common is that their injuries go beyond what workers’ compensation alone will pay them.

Some common scenarios include:

• construction accidents in growing areas such as Huntington, Babylon, Riverhead, and Patchogue
• roadway and highway work zone accidents on the LIE or Sunrise Highway
• warehouse and loading dock injuries
• delivery driver accidents
• falls from heights or scaffolding
• equipment-related accidents

Each of these situations may involve more than just a workers’ compensation claim.

Common Injuries in Workplace Accidents

Work injuries can range from minor to life-altering, and the most serious cases often involve injuries that permanently change the way a person lives their life. A construction worker who sustains a traumatic brain injury from a fall may face years of cognitive rehabilitation and never return to the same line of work. A delivery driver injured in a collision may suffer herniated discs or spinal damage requiring surgery and long-term physical therapy. Workers who suffer crush injuries or severe fractures on industrial job sites often face months of recovery and, in some cases, permanent functional limitations. The severity of these injuries is one reason why a third-party claim, which allows for full compensation rather than the capped benefits of workers’ compensation, can be so important to a worker’s financial future. Some of the most serious cases involve:

• traumatic brain injuries
• spinal cord injuries
• back and neck injuries
• fractures and orthopedic injuries
• severe lacerations
• crush injuries

These injuries often require extensive medical treatment and may affect a person’s ability to return to work.

How Workers’ Compensation and Third-Party Claims Work Together

When a work injury involves a third party, most injured workers will find themselves dealing with two separate legal systems at the same time. Understanding how those two systems interact, where they overlap, and where they can conflict is essential to protecting the full value of your injury claims.

Workers’ compensation runs first.
From the moment you are injured, you have the right to file a workers’ compensation claim. That claim provides immediate benefits: medical coverage for your injury and partial wage replacement while you are unable to work. You do not need to prove negligence. You do not need to wait for a lawsuit to resolve. Workers’ comp is available quickly, and for most injured workers, it is the financial lifeline that gets them through the first weeks and months of recovery.

The third-party case is built in parallel.
While workers’ compensation is providing short-term relief, an attorney should be investigating whether a third-party claim exists and beginning to build that case. Evidence needs to be preserved. Witnesses need to be identified. Responsible parties need to be evaluated. This work happens in the at the same time the comp claim is running, and it needs to start as soon as possible after the accident, before evidence disappears and the legal window narrows.

The lien is the critical connection between them.
When a workers’ compensation carrier pays benefits on your behalf, it acquires the right to be reimbursed from any third-party recovery you obtain. This is called a workers’ compensation lien, and it is governed by New York Workers’ Compensation Law § 29. In plain terms: if you recover $500,000 in a third-party lawsuit, the workers’ compensation carrier may have a claim against a portion of that money to recover what it paid you. This does not eliminate the value of a third-party claim. The third-party recovery will almost always exceed the lien amount by a significant margin. But it does mean that both claims need to be managed together, carefully, so that the lien is properly accounted for and at time of settlement and where possible, negotiated down to maximize what you actually keep.

Coordination between the two cases is not optional
Statements made in the workers’ compensation proceeding can be used in the third-party case. Settling one claim without accounting for the other can affect your rights in both. Timing matters. Strategy matters. A workers’ compensation attorney handles the comp claim; a personal injury attorney handles the third-party case. When those two attorneys are working in coordination, the result is a cohesive legal strategy aimed at maximizing total recovery across both proceedings. When they are not coordinated, money can be left on the table, or worse, one claim can undermine the other.

Evidence and Investigation in Work Injury Cases

Building a strong third-party case requires an early and complete investigation, and the window for securing important evidence can close quickly. Surveillance footage gets erased. Witnesses become harder to locate. Job site conditions change as construction projects progress. OSHA violations that were documented at the time of the accident may later be contested or minimized. At Palermo Law, we move quickly after a work injury to identify and preserve the evidence that will form the foundation of a third-party claim. This includes requesting records that many workers do not know exist, such as contractual agreements between general contractors and subcontractors that can establish which party controlled a construction site. The strength of the evidence gathered in the early stages of a case often determines how far that case can go and how much an injury attorney can get you.

Important evidence may include:

• accident reports and incident documentation
• photographs and video of the scene
• witness statements
• OSHA records and safety violations
• contracts between companies on a job site
• maintenance and inspection records

Preserving this evidence early can make a significant difference in the outcome of a case.

Compensation Available in Third-Party Claims

One of the most important differences between workers’ compensation and a third-party personal injury claim is what you can actually recover. Workers’ compensation caps your benefits and excludes entire categories of loss like pain and suffering. A third-party claim has no such ceiling. It is designed to make you whole, covering everything the injury has cost you and will cost you in the future. For workers who have suffered serious injuries, this difference can represent hundreds of thousands of dollars, or more.

Damages available in a third-party claim typically include:

The contrast with workers’ compensation is stark. Workers’ comp is a floor, not a ceiling. It keeps injured workers from falling through completely, but it was never designed to fully compensate for a serious injury. A third-party claim is where full and fair recovery is actually possible, and for workers who have suffered significant harm, pursuing one is often the single most important legal decision they will make.

How Palermo Law Handles Work Injury Cases

At Palermo Law, our focus is on identifying and pursuing third-party claims that arise from workplace accidents. Every case we take begins with the same question: who, beyond the employer, bears responsibility for what happened? Answering that question requires a systematic review of the accident circumstances, the relationships between companies on the job site, the condition of any equipment involved, and the conduct of any other parties who were present.

We do not handle the workers’ compensation claim itself. Instead, we work alongside workers’ compensation attorneys to ensure that the third-party injury case is fully developed and properly pursued without interfering with the ongoing comp claim. This coordination is important because missteps in one proceeding can affect the other, and because the workers’ compensation lien must be properly addressed in any third-party settlement or verdict.

Our approach includes:

• early investigation of the accident to secure evidence before it is lost or altered
• identifying all potentially responsible parties, including contractors, property owners, and equipment manufacturers
• preserving critical evidence such as surveillance footage, OSHA records, and site contracts
• building a case designed for trial if necessary, so that our clients are never pressured into accepting less than their case is worth

With more than 400 five-star Google reviews and over $75 million recovered for injured clients all over Long Island, Palermo Law has built a long track record of successfully pursuing third-party claims. Insurance companies and defense attorneys know our firm prepares cases fully and is willing to take them to trial. That reputation directly benefits our clients in settlement negotiations.

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