California Construction Accident Lawyers

California Construction Injury Claims Beyond Workers' Compensation

If you were hurt on a California construction site, workers' compensation covers your medical care and part of your wages, but it is often not the only claim you have.

Labor Code § 3852 preserves your right to sue a third party whose negligence caused the injury, such as another contractor, an equipment maker, or a driver.

A claim against the property owner or the general contractor runs through the Privette doctrine, which allows it only in specific situations.

Cal/OSHA safety standards can set the standard of care in that lawsuit.

Workers' comp pays nothing for pain and suffering, and a third-party claim can.

For questions about a jobsite injury, in English or Spanish, call (888) 713-6653.

Workers' Comp Exclusivity Under § 3602 and the Third-Party Claim Under § 3852

Under Labor Code § 3602, workers' compensation is the "sole and exclusive remedy" against your own employer, with narrow exceptions: a willful physical assault by the employer, an injury the employer made worse by fraudulently concealing it, and an injury from a defective product the employer made and sold to someone else.^[1] A separate statute, § 4558, allows a suit when an employer knowingly removed or failed to install a guard on a power press.

The exclusive remedy protects only your employer. Section 3852 says a comp claim "does not affect" your right to sue anyone else whose negligence caused the injury, and on a construction site that can be a long list.

• An uninsured employer. If your employer did not carry comp insurance, § 3706 lets you sue it directly, § 3708 presumes its negligence, and it cannot blame your own carelessness.
• Serious and willful misconduct. If the employer's own serious and willful misconduct caused the injury, § 4553 increases your comp benefits by one-half.
• The comp carrier's lien. When a third-party case recovers, the comp carrier is repaid what it spent, but only after your attorney's fees and litigation costs come off under § 3856, and it can take a credit against future comp benefits.

Our page on how a California third-party claim runs beside the comp case covers the lien, the future credit, and settlement rules.

The comp claim pays while you heal, and the third-party claim is where the rest of the loss, including the pain, the full wage loss, and the future, can be recovered.

The Privette Doctrine and the Exceptions That Reach an Owner or General Contractor

In Privette v. Superior Court (1993), the California Supreme Court held that an employee of an independent contractor "generally may not recover tort damages for work-related injuries from the contractor's hirer." In SeaBright Insurance Co. v. US Airways (2011), it added that a hirer presumptively delegates its safety duties to the contractor, including duties under Cal/OSHA regulations.^[2]

Privette protects the hirer of your employer, usually the owner or the general contractor above your subcontractor. It does not protect another subcontractor on the site that had no hand in hiring your employer, whose crew's negligence can be sued over in the ordinary way.

Retained control that affirmatively contributed to the injury

Under Hooker v. Department of Transportation (2002), a hirer is liable when it "retains control over any part of the independent contractor's work and negligently exercises that retained control in a manner that affirmatively contributes to the worker's injury." A general contractor that directed how a task was done, supplied the unsafe equipment, or promised a safety measure and failed to deliver it is the typical case.

A concealed hazard the hirer knew about

Under Kinsman v. Unocal Corp. (2005), a landowner is liable for a concealed hazard it knew or should have known about, that the contractor did not know about and could not reasonably discover, when it failed to warn. Asbestos hidden in a building and an unmarked energized line are the classic examples.

What the 2021 decisions in Gonzalez and Sandoval took away

In Gonzalez v. Mathis, the court refused to create a third exception for a known hazard, holding a hirer is not liable for an obvious danger even where the contractor had no reasonable way to make the work safe, unless the Hooker test is met. In Sandoval v. Qualcomm, it held that retained control counts only if the hirer actually exercised it in a way that affirmatively contributed to the injury.

CBRE and Andrews extend the doctrine

In 2024, CBRE v. Superior Court held that "a written contract is not required to invoke the Privette doctrine." In December 2025, Andrews v. Wagner treated a homeowner whose insurer hired an inspection company as a Privette hirer, and rejected a Kinsman claim because the steps the inspector slipped on were in plain view.

These decisions make a claim against an owner or general contractor harder to bring, which puts a premium on the facts that fit Hooker or Kinsman and on identifying every other company whose conduct played a part.

Cal/OSHA Standards as Evidence Under Labor Code § 6304.5

Labor Code § 6304.5 lets a Cal/OSHA safety standard be used in a third-party injury case "in the same manner as any other statute," so a violation can support a presumption of negligence. The California Supreme Court confirmed in Elsner v. Uveges (2004) that Cal/OSHA provisions can establish the standard of care in these cases.^[3] Whether a citation was issued is not admissible, except between an employee and the employee's own employer.

Fall protection shows how specific the standards are. California generally requires personal fall protection when work exposes employees to a fall of more than 7½ feet under Title 8, § 1670. For residential framing and residential roofing, that trigger dropped to 6 feet on July 1, 2025, matching the federal rule, while non-residential roofing has its own rules for roofs over 20 feet.

Matching the safety order to the work being done when the fall happened is how a third-party case turns a jobsite practice into proof of negligence.

Undocumented Workers Keep Their Injury Rights Under Labor Code § 1171.5

California's injury protections do not depend on immigration status. Labor Code § 3351 defines an employee for workers' compensation as anyone working under a contract of hire, "whether lawfully or unlawfully employed." Section 1171.5 applies state-law protections and remedies regardless of immigration status, makes status irrelevant to liability, and bars questions about it in discovery unless there is clear and convincing need.

A worker without papers can receive comp benefits and bring a third-party claim. The one limit the California Supreme Court recognized in Salas v. Sierra Chemical (2014), an employment case, concerns lost pay for the period after an employer learns a worker is not authorized. Our page on injury claims by undocumented construction workers covers the national picture.

Spanish-speaking callers can talk with us in Spanish, and what is said is confidential.

How Much Is a California Construction Accident Case Worth?

A California construction injury is worth the comp benefits plus, if a third party shares responsibility, a full damages recovery against that party, with no cap on pain and suffering.

• Workers' comp pays medical care, temporary disability at a portion of your wages, and permanent disability based on a rating, but nothing for pain and suffering
• A third-party claim pays your full lost earnings and earning capacity, future medical care, and pain, suffering, and loss of enjoyment of life
• The comp lien is repaid from the third-party recovery after fees and costs, so the two claims have to be valued together

Under Proposition 51, each defendant pays only its share of the non-economic damages, so a case with several responsible companies needs all of them in it.

For a worker who cannot return to the trade, the lost earning capacity is usually the largest number in the case, and it is the one comp pays least of.

How Long Do You Have to File a California Construction Injury Claim?

Two clocks run at once. For workers' compensation, report the injury to your employer within 30 days under Labor Code § 5400, and file the claim within one year of the injury under § 5405. For a third-party lawsuit, the deadline is two years from the injury under Code of Civil Procedure § 335.1.^[5]

If the project was public, such as a Caltrans, county, or school district job, a claim against the public entity needs a written government claim within six months, as our page on filing a claim against a California public agency explains.

The crew, the equipment, and the site conditions change as the job moves on, so the evidence is easiest to gather in the first weeks after the injury.