Indiana Excavation Accident Lawyers

Whether you’re trying to pour the foundation for a new building or install utilities in one that has been up for decades, digging or excavating is a key part of construction work in Indiana. Yet as crucial as this process is, excavations that have been improperly conceived or executed could suddenly cave in and smother or crush anyone inside of them – and recent data suggests that horrific tragedies like these may actually be on the rise.

According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), 39 American workers were killed doing trench or excavation work in 2022. As distressing as this figure is by itself, it also marks a significant uptick from the average trench cave-in fatality rate of 21 deaths per year that the Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded from 2011 to 2018. Moreover, with a square yard of dirt weighing over 3,000 pounds, even the survivors of an excavation accident are likely to sustain punishing injuries necessitating prolonged treatment at a cost that few families could afford.

Fortunately, compensation may be available if you have been badly hurt in an excavation accident on an Indiana construction site, and you could increase the amount you obtain if you partner with the construction accident lawyers at Hensley Legal Group, PC, a dedicated Indiana personal injury law firm whose experienced attorneys have been fighting on behalf of the wrongfully injured since 1998.

For a free case review with a knowledgeable Indiana excavation accident lawyer, please call us at (317) 472-3333, chat with us online, or fill out our contact form today.

Common Causes of Excavation Accidents

There are many different types of excavation accidents. For example, some workers may be suffocated, poisoned, or burned by the toxic or flammable gases that frequently accumulate inside of excavations, while others might slip or trip and fall into a trench from the unsecured edges above.

However, the most catastrophic excavation accidents in Indiana are cave-ins, during which the walls of an excavation collapse. Common causes of these incidents include:

Vibrations – Heavy machines and construction vehicles run almost constantly on most job sites, and their vibrations could destabilize the soil in an excavation such that the walls can no longer remain standing.
Added pressure – Similarly, positioning the construction machinery and supplies along with any excavated materials too close to an excavation site could apply enough pressure to break down the walls.
Excess moisture – The walls can further disintegrate if the soil expands because it has taken on excess moisture from rainfall or underground seepage.
Insufficient protective systems – Though certain protective systems might keep unsuspecting passersby from approaching and ensure that environmental factors don’t hasten a collapse, disaster could still strike if these systems prove to be insufficient.

Regardless of why an excavation accident ultimately occurs, you can trust our tenacious Indiana excavation accident attorneys to hold the parties responsible for it to account.

Who Is Responsible for an Excavation Accident?

But exactly who is responsible for an excavation accident? The truth is that it can often be tough to identify every potential defendant thanks to the inherent complexity of the construction industry. Any substantial building is only possible when numerous tradespeople perform separate tasks side by side in order to achieve a larger goal, and each of them could be in danger or at fault if something goes awry.

Some of the leading defendants in Indiana excavation accident cases are:

Property owners
Project developers
General contractors, contractors, and subcontractors
Manufacturers, distributors, and retailers of defective protective systems
Government agencies with authority over public land being excavated

In some instances, multiple individuals and entities could share varying degrees of blame simultaneously, and you could be forever barred from full recovery if you don’t go after all of them within the time allotted by law.

This is exactly the kind of senseless mistake that you can avoid by retaining our seasoned Indiana excavation accident lawyers, who are adept at exposing misconduct that could justify a case.

Demonstrating Negligence in an Excavation Accident

As in any viable personal injury claim, an Indiana excavation accident case needs to demonstrate two core elements: negligence – the failure to exercise care so that others aren’t harmed – and damages – the detrimental consequences of that negligence. Basically, if you incur physical damages as a result of a defendant’s negligence, you could pursue that defendant for economic damages, though what constitutes negligence in an Indiana excavation accident?

While every case is unique, defendants are usually considered negligent when they neglect to implement appropriate measures to either keep an excavation accident from happening or curb the damage it inflicts.

Many of these precautions can be taken during the planning stages. To that end, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health recommends that construction employers:

Hire and train capable supervisors.
Find out where subterranean utility lines are located and dig a minimum of five feet away from them.
Evaluate the stability of the soil prior to excavation.
Put adequate protective systems and traffic control and excavation emergency protocols in place.
Assign designated areas for equipment routes, entries, exits, and spoil piles.
Institute engineering safeguards when excavations are 20 feet deep or more.

On top of these suggestions, OSHA has enacted strict regulations under which excavations that are at least five feet in depth are required to incorporate one of these four protective systems:

Sloping – Excavation walls are shaped into continuous slopes.
Benching – Vertical walls have steps or stairs carved into them.
Trench boxes – Workers are shielded from cave-ins by structures known as trench boxes that are situated inside of excavations to provide shelter.
Shoring and supports – The walls of excavations are strengthened with the installation of steel or aluminum shoring, timber supports, or hydraulic cylinders.

Some construction projects could steer clear of excavations entirely by making use of such alternative methods as:

Pipe jacking or utility tunneling
Ramming or relining of pipes
Directional boring

As you can see, there are many options for anyone in charge of a construction site who is interested in either preventing an excavation accident altogether or lessening its impact. Not selecting any of them could be both a violation of the law and a sign of negligence, and Hensley Legal Group would be proud to get you justice for it.

How Our Indiana Excavation Accident Attorneys Can Help

An excavation accident can change your life in a matter of moments, overwhelming you with skyrocketing medical bills while robbing you of the ability to earn the money to pay them. Very soon, simply making ends meet could become a challenge, much less acquiring the resources to stave off ruin, but our Indiana excavation accident attorneys will be there to help, just like our firm has been helping hardworking Hoosiers like you since 1998.

If you hire Hensley, we will begin by carrying out a thorough investigation into your excavation accident and the defendants who played a role in it, then establish valid claims against them within the time permitted by law. If the circumstances warrant it, a lawsuit could be filed as well in a court with the power to issue a binding judgment.

Upon assembling a case that exhaustively conveys the defendants’ liability, our Indiana excavation accident lawyers will negotiate fiercely with their insurance companies for a settlement that reflects everything that has been taken from you, including your:

Medical expenses
Lost wages
Pain and suffering
Psychological trauma
Impaired mobility
Diminished quality of living
Loss of consortium (if relevant)

And if we don’t receive an offer that is worthy of your claim, we aren’t afraid to go to trial for a verdict that is, in contrast to many of our competitors, who rarely, if ever, make their way into a courtroom.

You may be reluctant to commit to more expenditures after spending so much already, but our firm operates on a contingency basis. This means that you won’t owe us anything until our Indiana excavation accident attorneys win your case.

At Hensley, we take on clients because we believe in them, and we are willing to take on every burden involved in making them whole again.

Reach Out to Our Indiana Excavation Accident Lawyers

Hensley Legal Group has been fighting for the wrongfully injured for over a quarter century. If your world has been upended by an excavation accident in Indiana, reach out to our Indiana excavation accident lawyers to learn how they can set things right.

You can arrange a complimentary consultation with an accomplished Indiana excavation accident attorney by calling us at (317) 472-3333, chatting with us online, or filling out our contact form now.