What Insurance Benefits Are Available To A Public Employee Injured In Car Crash While At Work?

There’s been a lot of media attention here locally in Central Florida about officer Michael Anderson, an Orlando Police Department Officer, who was actually hit by a vehicle in the course of a traffic stop in the course of his duties as a police officer. Officer Anderson suffered a back injury and local media is reporting that he is going to need a very sophisticated and involved back surgery. Apparently, he has a spinal cord injury and so he’s going to need this surgery and so that’s been in the news and we wanted to let him and his family know that they’re in our thoughts and prayers because we see people in our law practice that have back surgeries all the time, we know how debilitating it can be, we know how painful and lengthy their recovery process can be, so we just want to let Officer Anderson and his family know we’re thinking about them.

As a lawyer, we’re always thinking about how everything works in terms of who’s going to pay it, how are people going to protect themselves and be compensated or have their losses reimbursed after something like this. So in Officer Anderson’s case, first, it will be workers compensation since he was involved in this accident in the course and scope of his work, so that will pay for his medical expenses and a portion of his lost wages. Officer Anderson also might be able to recover from the driver who hit him although because of the circumstances of the accident, I’m going to guess that that driver didn’t have any insurance. The third thing we think of when we’re analyzing cases like this for our clients is uninsured motorist coverage. Hopefully, Officer Anderson and his family had uninsured motorist coverage on their vehicles. This will step into the shoes of the negligent driver, the driver that hit him. It will act just like the coverage that they might have had if they had thought to have the coverage, and with uninsured motorist coverage, it acts as an access coverage over and above workers compensation. So we’re going to hope that Officer Anderson, his family, and his wife had thought about that this possibly happening and had safeguarded themselves by acquiring uninsured motorist coverage. By the way, this situation would apply to almost any public servant or any employee of a company that’s hurt in a car accident in the course and scope of their regular job.

So if you have any questions about an accident like this one, and these things can be very complicated, please call me or my law partner Robert Hemphill at (407)565-7386, or visit our website at cullen-hemphill.com.