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When someone other than your employer causes your injury at work, California law may give you a separate claim against that person or company. This is called a third-party work injury claim, and it reaches further than workers' compensation: full lost wages, medical costs, and pain and suffering, paid by the party that actually caused the harm.
These claims have to show the other party was negligent, and their insurer knows it. California's comparative negligence rule also means your recovery shrinks by whatever share of fault is your responsibility, so the way the facts are established early can decide what the claim is worth.
The Sevey Law Firm has represented injured people in Roseville for more than 25 years, and claims against negligent third parties are central to how we handle work injuries. Contact us for a free consultation.
California Labor Code section 3852 lets an injured worker pursue all damages proximately resulting from the injury against a negligent third party.
That may cover the losses that come with paperwork and the ones that don't: emergency treatment, the surgeries and rehabilitation still ahead, every paycheck the injury has cost you, and the earning power it may have taken for good.
It may also cover what the injury did to the rest of your life. Physical pain, the hobbies and routines you had to give up, the toll of a long recovery: these losses are real, and in a third-party lawsuit they count.
A third party is any person or company other than your employer or a coworker whose negligence played a part in your injury. That can be the driver who hit you while you were working, an outside contractor on the same site, the owner of the property where you were hurt, or the maker of equipment that failed. The claim is entirely separate from any workers' compensation benefits you may be receiving.
More than one party may share responsibility for the same accident. Each of them may be brought into the same lawsuit, and sorting out who owes what is part of what the case decides.
Winning a third-party claim means proving negligence. You have to show the other party owed you a duty of care, failed to meet it, and caused your injury and losses through that failure.
In a work setting, that proof often lives in records: who controlled the site, who maintained the equipment, and what the witnesses saw. Evidence like this fades fast after an accident, and gathering it early can shape everything that follows.
Most third-party work injuries happen when the job puts you around people and property your employer doesn't control. Driving is the biggest one. Delivery runs, service calls, and errands between job sites: a negligent driver who hits you during any of them is a third party, like in any other crash.
The same is true when you're hurt on a customer's or vendor's property, struck by another company's crew on a shared site, or injured by equipment that failed the way its manufacturer should have prevented. Construction sites in particular tend to involve several companies working side by side, which is often where third-party claims come from.
California follows a pure comparative negligence rule: your recovery is reduced in proportion to your share of fault, and it survives even if some of the fault is yours.
In a work injury case, expect the other side to use this rule. Their insurer may argue you ignored a safety practice or weren't paying attention, because every percentage of fault assigned to you comes off the final amount. Pushing back on those arguments is often where much of the case is fought.
If someone else's negligence caused your injury on the job, waiting only helps the other side: deadlines run out, and proof gets harder to gather. The Sevey Law Firm has handled more than 6,000 cases for injured people, and building third-party claims that hold up against insurance company fault arguments is exactly that work. Contact us today for a free consultation.
In many cases, you might do both. California law treats them as separate: collecting workers' compensation benefits does not affect your right to sue a third party whose negligence caused your injury. The lawsuit is also where damages workers' comp doesn't provide, such as pain and suffering, may be recovered.
Yes. Being on the clock does not take away your right to pursue the at-fault driver, and the claim proceeds like any other injury claim: you prove their negligence and seek your full losses. That may hold true whether you were driving a company vehicle or your own car.
Sometimes. A separate company on the same site whose negligence hurt you can be a third party like any other. California courts limit claims against the business that hired your employer, though: an injured worker generally can't recover from that company just because the work was dangerous, so these cases usually turn on whether that company's own conduct helped cause the injury.
You generally have two years from the date of injury to file a third-party lawsuit.
Usually, yes. When workers' compensation has covered your medical care or part of your lost wages, and you later recover from the third party who caused the injury, the insurer generally has a right to reimbursement out of that recovery after litigation costs and attorney fees are addressed. Accounting for that repayment is part of valuing the claim.