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(602) 345-1818Updated 2026 | By Jared J. Pehrson | Impact Legal Car Accident Attorneys
If you were hurt on a Phoenix construction site, you may have two separate claims, not one. Workers’ compensation covers part of what you lost. A separate third-party civil case can cover categories of loss that workers’ comp does not, including pain and suffering and the full value of future medical care. Many injured workers focus only on the comp claim and never look at whether a non-employer contributed to the injury.
Call us at (602) 345-1818 for a free case review. We handle construction injury and wrongful death cases across Phoenix, Maricopa County, and the surrounding Valley.
Construction cases are not standard personal injury cases. They involve overlapping insurance systems, federal safety standards (OSHA), employer-only immunity, and often multiple companies on the same job site, each pointing at the other. A general PI lawyer who mostly handles fender-benders is not the right fit.
For related guidance, see our car accidents inside Phoenix construction zones.
For related guidance, see our Phoenix premises liability attorney.
What we bring to a construction case:
When a construction case comes in, here is the actual sequence:
You can read more about what your construction accident case is worth in our resource hub.
Construction is a dangerous industries in the country, and Phoenix’s construction boom has not made job sites any safer. We handle the major categories of construction injury cases:
If your accident does not fit a clean category, call us anyway. The category matters less than the evidence of who created the hazard.
Construction injuries tend to be severe. Workers fall from height. They get struck by steel. They get caught in equipment that was never properly guarded. The injuries we see most often include:
Report any injury to your supervisor in writing and get medical attention the same day. Gaps in treatment and unreported injuries are two issues insurance carriers exploit hardest.
OSHA tracks construction fatalities every year. Four causes account for the majority of worker deaths in this industry. OSHA calls them the Fatal Four:
When your accident fits one of the Fatal Four and a contractor ignored the relevant OSHA standard, that violation becomes useful evidence in a third-party claim. It does not automatically prove negligence, but it informs what a reasonable contractor should have done.
Beyond the Fatal Four, the underlying causes we see in Phoenix construction cases tend to come back to a few patterns:
Each of these can support a breach of duty finding under Arizona tort law when the breach caused your injury.
There are two parallel tracks, and many injured workers qualify for both.
Workers’ comp is a no-fault system. Almost every Arizona construction employer is required to carry it. If you were an employee and the injury happened on the job, you generally qualify, regardless of who was at fault. Even if you contributed to the accident, you can still receive benefits.
Workers’ comp pays:
Arizona workers’ compensation sets a one-year filing window from the date of injury (A.R.S. § 23-1061). The exact accrual rule and any exceptions to that window depend on your facts, so do not assume the deadline starts running on a different date without confirming it with an attorney.
The tradeoff: workers’ comp does not pay for pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, or full lost earning capacity. The wage benefit is capped. And you generally cannot sue your direct employer for negligence, because employers receive immunity in exchange for paying into the comp system. Narrow exceptions exist, mostly involving intentional misconduct.
This is the track many workers do not know about. Even when workers’ comp covers part of your loss, a separate civil lawsuit can go after anyone other than your direct employer who contributed to the injury. Under A.R.S. § 23-1023, workers’ comp and a third-party civil claim can proceed at the same time.
In a civil claim, you can pursue the full range of economic damages and non-economic damages:
The Arizona Constitution prohibits caps on damages for personal injury or death (Article II § 31 and Article XVIII § 6). That matters in serious construction cases, where the lifetime cost of a catastrophic injury can run into the millions.
In cases involving conscious disregard for worker safety (a contractor who knowingly ignored OSHA violations, for example), punitive damages may apply under Arizona’s “evil mind” standard.
The deadline for a civil construction lawsuit is 2 years from the date of injury under A.R.S. § 12-542. For wrongful death, it is 2 years from the date of death under A.R.S. § 12-542(2).
The “third party” is anyone whose conduct contributed to the injury but who is not your direct employer. On a typical Phoenix job site, that could include:
Identifying every viable defendant is a important things we do early in a case. Under Arizona’s several-liability rule (A.R.S. § 12-2506), each defendant generally pays only their assigned share of fault. That means if we miss a defendant, we miss a portion of the available recovery permanently.
If your case has both workers’ comp and third-party elements, a Phoenix workplace accident lawyer can coordinate both tracks so the comp carrier’s lien does not consume your civil recovery.
This is a procedural trap a lot of injured workers fall into. If your accident happened on a public works project (a road job, a school construction, a city facility, an ADOT contract), a state or municipal entity may be a defendant. Claims against government entities in Arizona require a separate notice of claim filed within 180 days of the injury under A.R.S. § 12-821.01.
Miss the 180-day notice and you can lose the right to sue that government entity, even if you are still within the 2-year statute of limitations for everyone else. We see this miss happen when injured workers wait too long to talk to an attorney.
The defense will typically try to assign you some fault. Arizona uses a pure comparative fault rule under A.R.S. § 12-2505. Your civil damages get reduced by your percentage of fault, but you can still recover even if you were more than half at fault.
Example: If a jury values your construction injury case at $500,000 and finds you 20% at fault for not clipping into your fall-protection harness properly, the recovery would be reduced to $400,000. If they find you 60% at fault, recovery would be reduced to $200,000. The number shrinks; it does not necessarily disappear.
Important distinction: Arizona’s comparative fault rule applies to the civil third-party claim only. It does not apply to workers’ compensation. Comp is no-fault. Even if the accident was largely your fault, you can still receive workers’ comp medical and wage benefits as long as you were on the job and the statutory requirements are met.
What this means in practice: never admit fault on a recorded statement, never speculate about what you “should have done,” and let your attorney handle communication with the insurance carriers.
The deadlines depend on which claim you are filing:
Two special rules worth knowing:
For a deeper walk-through of filing windows, see our page on the Arizona statute of limitations. Miss the deadline and your claim can be permanently barred, no matter how strong the evidence. Call early.
Almost always no. Arizona’s workers’ compensation system gives employers immunity from civil lawsuits by their employees in exchange for paying into the comp system. The narrow exceptions involve intentional misconduct, not ordinary negligence. You can still pursue claims against any non-employer (a subcontractor, equipment manufacturer, property owner, motorist) who contributed to the injury.
Yes, in most cases. File the workers’ comp claim first, then pursue the third-party case in parallel. The comp claim is designed to get your medical care covered while a civil case works its way through the system. The two systems coexist under A.R.S. § 23-1023. The comp carrier typically asserts a lien on any civil recovery, and a portion of an attorney’s work at the end of a case involves negotiating that lien.
Arizona workers’ compensation and civil tort claims are generally available regardless of immigration status. Defense attorneys sometimes try to raise immigration status in a case, and how it is treated depends on what issue it is being raised on. The admissibility of status, particularly on lost-wage calculations, has been contested in Arizona courts and the answer can be fact-specific. The key point: status alone is not a reason to skip filing a claim. Call us and we will walk through what applies to your situation.
Worker classification is a contested issues in construction cases. Many workers labeled “1099” by their hiring company are legally employees under Arizona law based on how the work is controlled. If you were misclassified, you may be entitled to workers’ comp benefits that were denied. If you are a true independent contractor, the workers’ comp bar against suing your hiring company does not apply in the same way, but the specific claims available depend on the contract, the control facts, and the conduct involved. We work through the classification question early.
It depends on injury severity, the number of defendants, whether insurance carriers negotiate in good faith, and whether the case has to be filed and litigated. A straightforward workers’ comp claim can close in months. A serious third-party case with multiple defendants and contested liability often takes 18 to 36 months. Catastrophic injury cases often take longer because we need to wait for the injury to reach maximum medical improvement before we can value future care accurately.
You can still recover. Arizona is a pure comparative fault state. Your civil damages get reduced by your percentage of fault, but you do not lose the case unless your fault is 100%. For workers’ comp purposes, your fault generally does not bar benefits (the system is no-fault).
For more general questions about Arizona injury claims, see our Phoenix personal injury FAQ.
Construction injuries change lives. The medical bills add up fast. Wages stop. Your family is suddenly making decisions about long-term care and disability planning while you are still in a hospital bed. You should not have to navigate the workers’ comp system and the civil claim system at the same time without help.
We offer:
Call (602) 345-1818 or contact our Phoenix law office to schedule your free consultation.
Impact Legal Car Accident Attorneys
16202 N Cave Creek Rd Suite D, Phoenix, AZ 85032
(602) 345-1818
By Jared J. Pehrson | Impact Legal Car Accident Attorneys