Personal Injury Lawsuit from Workplace

1. UNDERSTANDING THE
ESSENTIALS OF
PERSONAL INJURY LAW
Legal Topic

2. An employee of a radio station owned
by Bakewell media is suing that
company contending he was exposed to
mold at the workplace on a persistent
basis. He alleges that the exposure to the
mold, which the company permitted to
flourish at the site, caused him physical
harm, injury and damage.

3. Mold Lawsuit Specifics
The plaintiff in the lawsuit was employed by WBOK Radio in New Orleans, Louisiana. In the lawsuit,
the former employee asserts that his employer (the defendant in the litigation) was negligent in
maintaining the premises. The negligence resulted in the injuries the plaintiff alleges he sustained,
together with additional medical complications.
The lawsuit does not specifically indicate the precise amount of money the former employee is
seeking in damages from the radio station company. The lawsuit does set forth that the former
employee is seeking compensation for a wide range of different types of losses that include:
medical expenses, pain and suffering, mental anguish, embarrassment, lost wages, lost earning
capacity and humiliation.
News and social media reports do not indicate the specific position the former employee held with
the radio station company. In addition, these public reports do not delineate specifically how the
former employee came into recurring contact with mold in the workplace or whether or when he
notified his superiors about his concerns with the mold condition at the radio station.

4. Basics of Negligence Claims and
Lawsuits
When a person has been injured and desires to obtain compensation via a personal injury claim or
lawsuit, a number of fundamental factors must be established legally by injured individual. First, a
person must demonstrate that another individual (or business) was in fact negligent. By this it is
meant that the a third party had a duty of care and failed to satisfy that obligation.
In the case of the former employee in the news item, in order to obtain compensation, he must
demonstrate that the radio station owed a duty to him to keep the workplace free from harmful old.
The former employee must then demonstrate that the employer failed to satisfy that duty -- that the
employer knew of the old condition (or reasonable should have known about it) and failed to rectify
the problem.

5. A person seeking compensation for an injury caused by the negligence of someone else must
also demonstrate what legally is known as a nexus between the action (or inaction) of the
third party and the damages sustained by the person making a claim. Turning again to the
news item about the former employee and mold in the workplace, he would need to
demonstrate that the physical injuries and medical complications he endured were caused
by exposure to mold in the workplace.
As part of the overall process of pursuing a claim for compensation arising out of injuries
sustained because of the negligence of a third party, a person must also be able to assign a
monetary value to the losses. If a person claims lost wages, an itemization of that dollar
amount must ultimately be provided. The same holds true for medical expenses and similar
losses. Ultimately, even pain and suffering must be quantified into a dollar amount, which can
be something of a challenging albeit a necessary process.