Houston, TX — A man was badly injured on Wednesday morning in NW Houston after he was accidentally run over by an 18-wheeler truck at the Enerflex Energy System building off Highway 290. Police said that the man, 29, was assisting an 18-wheeler truck get out of the Enerflex parking lot when he was caught between the tires.
The 29-year old man, who wasn’t named, was taken to a hospital with serious injuries to his legs. The news said that the injuries were severe, but that he was not in a life-threatening condition as of that afternoon.
Though Enerflex does provide distribution services, it’s not clear if the 18-wheeler in question here was owned by them or another company. Also, it’s not clear who this man was or if he was working for Enerflex at the time.
There may need to be some more investigation.
Map of Enerflex
Telge Road
Commentary:
Because this accident happened at a business, people may get the wrong idea as to how this accident handled. Many may automatically assume the victim is going to be corralled into a workers’ compensation solution, but things may be a little different, depending on what happened. If the worker and the tractor-trailer were from different companies, then the company behind the tractor-trailer could (and more than likely will be) held responsible for the accident. Workers’ compensation may look good at first glance, but really it tends to benefit employers a great deal more than it helps the victims that were working for them. Any way around this by filing a claim against another company usually benefits the victims far more than the alternative. If anybody knows more about this accident or how it happened, I’d be interested to learn what they know.
Now The police haven’t really offered a lot of details here, which makes me think that they probably don’t have a lot of information to begin with. The issue that I see here is that an 18-wheeler ran over someone who was probably just trying to help out. Although I didn’t witness this accident, I’m comfortable guessing that the truck driver likely lost sight of the man and continued to drive, not knowing where the man was.
Of course, this is all speculation until a serious investigation is launched to really uncover the details. I do want to highlight a couple of other likely scenarios and then highlight the legal implications behind them.
Scenario 1:The man who was hit by the truck worked for Enerflex and was helping the truck as part of his job. If the truck was owned by Enerflex, then this would be considered a “work-related claim” in the eyes of the law. Texas has special rules for work-related accidents, but the main gist of it is that your employer’s workers’ comp policy will probably handle things. If the truck was owned by a different company, then the victim here would have a third-party claim against that company. He may also have a workers’ comp claim to file, but the important thing to remember is that injured workers do have rights when it comes to work-related accidents involving third parties.
Scenario 2: The man was an employee of the trucking company and had hopped out to help the driver navigate. At that point, again, this would be considered a work-related accident and would be handled internally by a worker’s comp policy, legally speaking.
— Grossman Law Offices
