Boynton Beach Construction Accident Lawyer
You went to work on a site and came home in an ambulance, and workers compensation is not going to cover what this actually costs. We can take it from here. Call 833-370-8692 for a free consultation. You pay us nothing unless we win. Our Boynton Beach personal injury lawyers have taken these cases across Palm Beach County since 1993.
Construction Accident claims in Boynton Beach
The general contractor, the sub and the equipment owner will each say it was one of the others, and the site will look different tomorrow. Meanwhile you are on a check that does not cover the rent, with surgery ahead and no idea when you work again. Finding who else owes you beyond compensation is our job, and it starts the day you call.
The construction we see around Boynton Beach is mostly residential, mid-rise and re-roofing rather than tower work, which changes the injury pattern rather than the law. Falls from roofs and ladders, and injuries from unguarded openings, are the recurring cases. Two things decide them. Whether the injured worker was an employee or was classified as an independent contractor, which changes whether comp exists at all, and whether anyone other than the employer controlled the condition. Misclassification is common in residential work and is worth checking rather than accepting.
A Boynton Beach construction injury usually involves a small residential crew, and it produces two possible claims: workers’ compensation through your own employer, and a negligence claim against anybody else who controlled the condition. Whether compensation exists at all frequently turns on whether the worker was properly classified, which is a question about the actual working relationship rather than about the paperwork.
What to do after a construction accident in Boynton Beach
- Report the injury to your employer, and note the date you did it. Florida requires an injured worker to report a workplace injury to the employer, and the period for doing it is short. Say it to a supervisor, and follow it with a text or a message so there is a record of the date. Injuries reported late are disputed on that ground alone, and a message sent the same afternoon closes the argument before it starts.
- Write down every company that was on the site. Not only who employs you. The general contractor, the other trades working that day, whoever owned or operated the equipment, the delivery driver, the crane or hoist company, the property owner. Photograph the signage at the gate and the logos on the trucks. Your employer is generally the one party you cannot sue in negligence, so the names that matter most are the other ones.
- Photograph the scene and the equipment before it changes. A site is different by the next morning. The ladder gets put away, the opening gets covered, the scaffold moves up a level and the trench gets backfilled. Photograph the thing itself, the guardrails or the ones that were missing, the tags and inspection stickers on any equipment, and the wider area so it is clear what a person could actually see.
- Get treated, and understand who is directing the care. Go to the hospital if you need to. After that, workers’ compensation generally directs treatment to physicians the carrier authorizes, which is a real constraint and not a suggestion. It is worth having somebody explain how that works before you are unhappy with it, because the process for changing an authorized physician has its own rules and its own timing.
- Immigration status does not decide whether you have a claim. Florida’s workers’ compensation statute defines an employee to include workers whether they are lawfully employed or not, and a negligence claim against another company on the site does not turn on status either. Workers are told the opposite constantly. One thing genuinely is worth care: anything to do with documents given to an employer should be discussed with a lawyer before it is discussed with anybody else.
Where these happen in Boynton Beach
The construction around south Palm Beach County is residential, mid-rise and re-roofing rather than tower work. The crews are smaller, the paperwork is thinner, and both of those change how a claim is built.
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Roofs and ladders
The recurring injury in this area, and the one carriers fight hardest, because the fall is rarely witnessed by anybody who was not on the crew.
- Fall protection, anchorage and whether anything was actually available on the roof that day
- Ladder setup, footing and tie-off, which is documented by photographs or by nothing at all
- Weather and surface conditions, which are on record even when nothing else is
- A roofing subcontractor, a general contractor and a homeowner, which are three different defendants
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Unguarded openings and edges
Mid-rise and residential work creates holes and edges as it goes, and the crew that made one is often not the crew that falls through it.
- Floor and stair openings, skylights and shaft openings left after another trade finished
- Guardrails removed for access by somebody else and never put back
- The sequence of trades on the site, which the schedule and the daily records establish
- Whoever controlled the area, which is a contract question rather than a matter of who was standing nearby
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Small crews and thin paperwork
A three-person crew usually has no safety program, no sign-in sheets and no written hazard analysis, and that absence is evidence in itself.
- No record of any training or instruction, which undercuts the argument that a worker ignored it
- Equipment borrowed, rented or owned by somebody other than the employer
- Cash arrangements and informal hiring, which is where the classification question comes from
- Text messages and photographs on phones, which on a small job are frequently the only site record
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Occupied homes and communities
A great deal of this work happens on properties where residents are still living, which brings additional parties into the claim.
- Homeowners and associations, which carry their own insurance separately from the trades
- Association approvals and restrictions that shape how the work was set up
- Residents and passers-by injured by the work, who bring an ordinary negligence claim rather than compensation
- Permit and inspection history, which on residential work is often the only paper trail
What causes them
- Being struck by vehicles, equipment and swinging loads on an active site
- Trench and excavation collapse, where the protective system was absent or was the wrong one for the soil
- Contact with overhead power lines and with temporary power that was not properly grounded
- Crane, hoist and rigging failures, including loads that were never within the chart
- Scaffold collapse, and planks, ties and guardrails that were altered by somebody else’s crew
The injuries we see, and what each one turns on
Amputation and hand injuries
Saws, nail guns, presses and caught-in injuries. Losing fingers or a hand ends a career in most of the trades, and the claim has to be built around what somebody can earn afterward rather than around what the surgery cost.
Burns and electrical injury
Contact with overhead lines and with temporary power produces injuries that are worse than they look at the roadside, because the damage runs along the path the current took. Cardiac and neurological effects can appear later, and the treatment runs to skin grafting and months of rehabilitation.
Death
Where a worker is killed, there is a compensation claim through the employer and, separately, a wrongful death claim against anybody else responsible. The second is brought by the personal representative of the estate rather than by relatives individually, which is a probate step worth starting early because it holds everything else up.
What Florida law requires you to prove
Compensation against your employer, and what it does not pay
Workers’ compensation under Chapter 440 pays medical care and a portion of lost wages regardless of who was at fault, and in exchange it is generally the exclusive remedy against your own employer under Fla. Stat. § 440.11. What it does not pay is anything for pain, for what daily life has become, or for the full value of a career that has ended. It also has its own deadlines, starting with the requirement in Fla. Stat. § 440.185 that the injury be reported to the employer promptly.
The claim beside it, against everybody else
A construction site is a set of separate companies, and the exclusive remedy protects only your employer. Another subcontractor, an equipment owner or manufacturer, a crane or hoist operator, a delivery company or the property owner all remain answerable in ordinary negligence, and that claim does pay for pain and for lost earning capacity. Florida does extend the employer’s immunity to a general contractor in defined circumstances under Fla. Stat. § 440.10, which is precisely why the contractual structure of the site has to be established rather than assumed. Most Florida negligence claims arising on or after March 24, 2023 carry a two-year deadline under Fla. Stat. § 95.11.
What the federal safety rules do and do not do
Construction work runs under the federal standards in 29 CFR Part 1926, including the fall protection requirements in 29 CFR § 1926.501, which generally require protection at six feet in construction. A violation does not by itself create a right to sue, and a citation is not a verdict. What it does provide is a documented standard against which conduct is measured, and a federal investigation file that would not otherwise exist. Employers also have to report a workplace fatality within eight hours and an amputation or in-patient hospitalization within twenty-four under 29 CFR § 1904.39, which fixes a date and generates records.
The full statutory detail, and the parts that differ by claim type, sit on our statewide construction accident page rather than being restated in every market.
How we prove it in Palm Beach County
On a small job the usual construction paperwork does not exist, so the evidence comes from different places. That is a practical difference rather than a weakness.
- The permit file and inspection history, which on residential work is frequently the only formal record
- Contracts and any written agreement between the homeowner, the general contractor and the trades
- Phone photographs and messages from everybody on the crew, which is the real site record on a small job
- The equipment, ladder or scaffold, preserved before it is repaired or returned
- Payroll, tax and payment records, which decide the classification question
- Whatever safety documentation exists, on the understanding that its absence is itself an answer
- Any federal safety investigation file, and the employer’s reporting of the injury to the agency
- Weather and surface conditions for the day, which are on record independently
The classification question runs alongside all of that rather than after it. Whether there is compensation coverage at all, and whether a straight negligence claim against the employer becomes possible instead, both depend on it.
Who would handle your case
Being hurt in Boynton Beach is hard enough without working out the legal side on your own. The trial lawyers below have handled construction accident claims across Florida since 1993, and one of them will take yours from the first call to the last check. They will tell you what your case is worth and why, and they will be straight with you about the parts that are hard.
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Brett J. Yonon Senior Trial Attorney Selected to Florida Super Lawyers in 2024 and 2025. Brett Yonon is who this firm puts on a catastrophic injury or a death in the family, and he has tried those cases to verdict. Full profile → -
Richard P. Pravato Founding & Managing Attorney Board Certified in Civil Trial Law by The Florida Bar since 2004, and by the National Board of Trial Advocacy. Injury cases exclusively since 1996. Full profile →
How insurance companies handle these claims
Two carriers are usually involved from the start and they want different things. The compensation carrier is managing a claim it has to pay whatever happened, and the liability carrier for another company on the site is deciding whether it has any exposure at all.
- The equipment is repaired, returned or put back in service
- A ladder, a scaffold component, a hoist or a piece of plant can be repaired or sent back to a rental company within days, and once it is gone nobody can examine it. A written request that it be preserved costs nothing and can go out in the first week. Sent late it becomes an argument about what was destroyed rather than a finding about what failed.
- A recorded statement, asked for early and asked for often
- Both carriers will want one and the questions are about what you were told, what you were wearing and what you have done before. You are not obliged to be recorded by a liability carrier for another company, and the answers given in the first week by somebody on pain medication get quoted back months later as considered testimony.
- You are watched
- Surveillance is ordinary in these files and it is lawful. What it produces is a few minutes of somebody lifting a bag or walking to a car, offered as proof they are fine. The answer is simply to be accurate: describe what you can do on a good day and on a bad one, tell the treating doctor the same thing you tell everybody else, and do not overstate. Consistency is what makes surveillance footage worthless.
What a claim can include
Life care costs after a catastrophic injury
Equipment, home modification, attendant care and the replacement schedule for all of it, set out by a professional so that it is a number rather than an argument.
What the compensation carrier takes back
Where both claims exist, the compensation carrier generally has a right to be repaid out of a third-party recovery. How much it actually recovers is negotiable and is governed by a formula rather than by the invoice total, and handling it properly is a meaningful part of what an injured worker ends up with.
What a family may recover after a death
Compensation death benefits through the employer, and separately a wrongful death claim against anybody else responsible. The second is brought by the personal representative of the estate, and Florida decides by statute which survivors may recover and for what.
Why Wolf & Pravato in Boynton Beach
A case arising in Boynton Beach is normally heard at the South County Courthouse in Delray Beach rather than downtown West Palm Beach, and the firm’s office on East Gateway Boulevard is a short drive from it. On residential work the records are local and the companies are small, which makes being nearby a practical advantage rather than a marketing point.
Fewer than one percent of Florida lawyers are Board Certified in Civil Trial law: 861 of them, against a Bar membership over 109,000. Richard Pravato is one, and has been since 2004. Carriers price a claim partly on who is holding it, which is the practical reason that matters to somebody deciding who to call.
A consultation costs nothing, and neither does the case unless we recover money for you. Where we do not believe a claim is worth bringing, we will tell you plainly rather than take it on and let it drift.
Boynton Beach construction accident questions
My boss said I am an independent contractor. Does that mean no workers’ compensation?
Not by itself. What decides coverage is the actual working relationship rather than what the paperwork calls it: who controlled the work, who supplied the tools, whether you worked for anybody else. In the construction industry Florida treats the question more strictly than in other trades. If the classification was wrong there may be coverage after all, and if there genuinely is none, a straight negligence claim against the employer becomes possible instead.
There were no witnesses except the crew, and they work for the same man.
It is the usual position on a small job and it is workable. The physical evidence, the equipment, the permit file and the phone photographs everybody on a crew takes tend to establish more than a reluctant witness would. Colleagues can also be deposed later, when they are no longer standing in front of the person who employs them, and their account frequently changes at that point.
It was a homeowner’s job and there is no general contractor.
Then the homeowner may be the party who controlled the site, and homeowners carry insurance. What matters is who decided how the work was set up, who supplied the equipment and who was directing it. On unpermitted work the absence of a permit is itself part of the picture, and the county record establishes whether one was ever pulled.
I am getting workers comp. Can I still bring a claim?
Against your employer, generally not. Against anyone else who contributed to the injury, yes, and that claim is not barred by the comp system. On a multi-contractor site there is very often such a party. It also pays for pain and suffering, which comp never does.
I am undocumented. Can I still make a claim?
Immigration status does not remove the right to bring an injury claim in Florida. It can raise practical questions worth discussing candidly and privately, which is exactly the sort of conversation the free consultation is for.
The questions that come up on every kind of claim, deadlines, fees, recorded statements and fault, are answered on our Florida injury claim FAQ.
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Tell us what happened
A lawyer will listen, tell you what Florida law does with those facts, and be straight with you about whether it is worth bringing. We are at 1375 E Gateway Blvd, Boynton Beach, FL 33426.