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What You Can Do If Your Employer Won’t File an Accident Report

When you are injured on the job, it’s your responsibility to report that injury to your employer. If he or she was present for the accident, it will already be known, but you could make the report official anyway. After you have reported the accident, your employer should report it to the state’s workers’ compensation board, as well as to the company’s workers’ comp provider. In some unfortunate situations, employers fail to take these crucial steps, which could impact your compensation. The following are some things you can do if your employer refuses to file the report.

Find Out Why

There are a lot of reasons why an employer might choose not to file a workers’ compensation report. Some could be legitimate, and others might be wrong. Some employers don’t file because:

  • They have come up with a “better” plan that allows you to get back to work sooner. This keeps their insurance costs down, but it doesn’t help you at all.
  • They encourage you to use your own health insurance coverage. Unfortunately, many employers promise they’ll file a workers’ comp claim later, but it never happens and you don’t receive the lost wages and other compensation you deserve.
  • They convince you your regular salary will be more than workers’ compensation. In most cases, you are compensated much greater than what you make regularly, so this generally isn’t correct.
  • They don’t have the time to deal with it. Unfortunately, these employers are the ones that usually end up with a much more time-consuming lawsuit on their hands at a later time.
  • They have forgotten to do it. While this may seem like a legitimate reason, you need to be compensated, so you need to hold your employer accountable for filing the injury report.

Contact the Workers’ Compensation Board

Each state has a workers’ compensation board that looks at every workers’ comp case. If your employer fails to report your injuries, you can contact the board to do it yourself. Knowing why your employer didn’t file will be helpful in getting the compensation you deserve when you make a report on your own.

Contact a Lawyer

Under the law, your employer is required to help you obtain proper workers’ compensation. If he or she is being difficult and not handling the situation correctly, it might be time to enlist the help of an attorney.  


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